It is the first time you see shirtless joggers and don’t question their sanity or your toughness. It is blankets on grass. The harsh reminder of a cloud or a passing shadow that we’re not there yet. Sadness. Wondering why and then remembering. It is seeing sticks bulbs leaves flowers bloom faster than you thought. Yawning fiddleheads, squelching boots, whoops-it’s-9pm dinners.
Then there is sunscreen and the mid afternoon feeling that today is somehow forever. The patch of brown grass balding, the first dust billowing. Itchy necks and the way the water slicks off your glass into the holes on the patio table, small windows to who knows what.
Those will eventually snap shut, the tables stashed in the garage. But before then there are sweatshirts. The brisk swishing shuffle through weightless crackling ankle-kissing leaves, no resistance but the fast consolidating dirt. There’s the first full Sunday on the couch, the moon leaning its way into a once-private conversation, the last new friend for a while, finally-it’s-9pm goodnights.
Then there are the runners again, pumping through clouds of their own hot breath somehow shirtless sweatless past stroller bundles outside the bakery window. They don’t stop or look down to say hello. Neither do you, angling around the puddle in the rutted frozen road, the one whose glassy bubble I pop with my boot heel, wishing for another layer.