By: Violet Webster

On Remembering

Summer has come and gone

Leaving me

Slightly sunburnt and bruised

in its wake.

As the leaves turn

To their autumnal gold

And the wind carries the sharp tinge of winter,

I’m left to remember the little things

The smell of not enough sunscreen on a 98º day.

The heat of a bonfire singing your eyebrows.

The light from fireflies illuminating the night sky.

The bite of a guitar string.

The sound of my heartbeat

Beneath a layer of sweat.

I’m left to remember the things I wish I could forget.

Ode to a Mosquito Bite

One summer

A mosquito found my leg and said

Finally!

No amount of acrid bug spray could delay the inevitable.

One Summer

(Which soon became every summer)

My legs were adorned with the welts that no amount of itch cream could soothe.

How to describe the feeling of an itch?

It’s attempting to identify the song that lives in the back of your head,

It’s reciting the words to a long-forgotten monologue from English class, learned an eternity ago.

It’s—

It’s—

You scratch.

I Always always scratch.

Once the fall arrives

My legs turned into a road map.

The pink dots long since turned into a dull red

Scars left over from a life of sun and trees that have yet to lose their green.

Here, the mosquito that got trapped in my sleeping bag.

Here, a particularly traumatic game of kickball.

Here, my first love.

Maybe the Sun is Overrated…

Have you ever felt the all-consuming wet

That comes from running through the rain

With neither jacket nor umbrella at your side?

Who hurt the sky?

So badly that her tears fall for hours

Days

Weeks

Have you ever heard a crack of thunder

So loud it shakes your very bones

And makes the very hair on your arms stand on end?

Summer storms

Are worth the pain

If only for the promise

Of a summer sky

Hiding just behind a brooding cloud.

A girl places her phone on the windowsill

And carefully presses record

As the summer rain trickles off the pane.

I’m confused until she shoots me a small smile,

Explaining that when the winter comes

She keeps them as memories

Reminders of the summers that have gone

And the summers still to come.