Tall as Summer

About a girl I knew once...

 Tall as Summer

 

Even the most abstract art must be done on a

Concrete canvas.

 

So when you hopscotched through passing lanes and around potholes, I know you were just trying to remember what it felt like in 3^rd grade when you wanted to be a dancer.  You didn’t want to believe in leaves changing colors, because it meant that the tall slide wouldn’t burn, even through your pants; that there would be no more otter pops traded and shared, glistening in the heat; but most importantly that you would have to watch your own words freeze into visibility before you, and I know that scared you most.

 

I saw you buying ice cream for your inflatable pool party in December. I couldn’t come, but I know you had hit some big vanilla-colored icebergs before.

 

So when it came time for you to relearn how to smile, or freeze tight-lipped solid shivering in your changing seasons, you asked your feet where to go, what tune to sketch in chalk on the sidewalk. They pointed you to your old hopscotch no-passing and turn-only lines, where you slipped on heat waves you had risen out of refrozen snow cone gutter balls one winter long ago, before you learned that not every snowball thrown at you had rocks in it.

 

Your feet said play, dance, and so you sung, shaking the arthritic tree branches so that red and orange leaves would fall to contrast your eternal summer. You gave Fall heatstroke, and rained warm on Winter.

 

Nowadays, the rosy sheen on your wooden-playground guitar rebuffs the chill hanging over café customers just stepping in from their own personal winters. You sing like children running around trees, smiling, and your words taste like otter pops in tiny hot hands. The last time I saw you, you were singing to yourself:

 

“Da da da-da-da-da, da da da.

Da da da-da-da-da.

I don’t know where I’m going,

But I want you to come.”