By Taylor May Hagenbucher
I remember days, long as a jet stream
when summer seeped into our freckled skin. Without
the monotony of a five-day school week, I had nothing
but the growth of your white-blonde hair to tell me what month it was.
Afternoons spent riding our rusty, hand-me-down bikes for miles.
Sometimes to a destination, sometimes home.
No helmets, just wind, and pure hope holding onto our skulls–
the hope we wouldn’t soar off our bicycles into the oncoming
traffic on Hwy 51, or down the hill on Schmitt.
The night you asked to come outside with me
when I would lie out on the ground in the dark.
The stars were close enough to touch, but a world above.
A few moments, grass itched underneath us. We had to go inside
because you thought you saw someone by the garbage can.
I remember sitting in the kitchen with you and dad,
you with a sheet wrapped around your small shoulders,
the familiar buzz of the electric razor vibrating onto your scalp.
Awaiting your buzz cut to relieve you from the summer heat;
laughing as tufts of your angel-thin, dandelion mane fell to the linoleum.
I remember the tears you tried to hide
when dad’s hand slipped and his razor nicked your ear.
Your eyes welled. You held a once-stark-white paper towel on the wound.
All I wanted in that moment was to stop the bleeding.
