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80 summers ago, maybe…we washed each other’s clothes in the river. grew. drank dandelion tea. put sleeping pills in hamburger meat that we fed the neighbors’ mean old dogs so we could sneak around while they snored. ate cake, maybe. before we got so old. painted houses for money, sunburned and freckled over. drank up all the earnings before midnight, danced in dive bars, not sure what they called them back then. climbed up old oak trees, dropped leaves on whoever walked under. got stung by the poison caterpillars up there when we weren’t careful. weren’t afraid of the dark back then, kids played in the street, no cars to watch out for. no televisions or microwave ovens to fill us up with radiation then. we gathered our own eggs, sold the extra to the people down the road. we bought their milk in big warm gallon jars. jumped rope, fought over penny candy. pennies. maybe raced to the rope swing, fell in with all our clothes still on. Read each other big books with words we didn’t understand. grew up. snuck in hotels, wore suits and dresses and ate oysters. wore lipstick and powder. visited cemeteries to remind us why.
