Finally Mourning my Childhood Summers

BY: EMILY HIZNY

blueberry bushes grew by Grandma’s house in an open field that bears the scars of grape plants. it was her father that planted them and her mother who dug them up. a white-paneled house sits just off the property, lonely. like a lighthouse. I should have gone wandering more, but I was too anxious a child to be content in getting lost. there was a stick pile larger than the garage and Grandpa burned paper in a little brick stove. the small burgundy shed repurposed as my playhouse always smelled musty, they only opened it when I visited. Grandma and Grandpa used to have a boat. we fed the ducks at Lake Wallenpaupack and there was this rock a few feet from shore that Grandma fished out of the water for me. I brought it home to my apartment’s front garden. I wish I remembered to take it with me when I moved.

Grandpa, what do I do if you don’t wake up?

what do you do if Grandma doesn’t?

what is little girl me

still living inside me

supposed to do?

she doesn’t know how to say goodbye.

do you remember letting me drive the boat?

do you remember the toads in the driveway?

how long will you remember me?

which hug will be our last?

I miss being in the hammock of making-the-bed sheets, I want to wake Grandpa up again and show Grandma my computer games, back when I was understood and all-encompassed. I miss past us and the crickets outside my window, present us is on our way to parting ways. we’ve both broken bones and fractured futures lately, only hearing about each other’s healing. I’ve changed too much for you to know all the skin I’ve shed and yet I am still all of me before twenty.

the colors are bleeding and the crowns are bending and the sky isn’t so bright anymore. where are the flowers that popped up between the stepping stones above the septic tank? Grandma’s house is folding itself into a book, losing pages and smudging trees, I didn’t see the waters rising. or what I was truly losing

when they moved.