Old photos,
frozen
dripping with nostalgia.
Memories
gilded with gold
from the passage of time.
Moments
romanticized in afterthought,
idealized until unrivaled with the present.
Unreachable.
Unrepeatable.
She remembered,
recollected,
reminisced,
overcome with homesickness for times
filed away in her memory.
She felt her heart
bubbling up,
constricting her throat,
and she quietly
swallowed her spirit
back down
before it
could snake up higher
and mount a  pulse of pressure
behind her blurry eyes.
It tasted like
cotton candy dripping with twinkling sugar,
like the smoky air of a campfire,
like blown out birthday candles and dripping wax.
A shattering explosion of memories in her mouth,
leaving her with
drained wishes.

That Sunday night feeling.
Heart-constricting.
Stomach-sinking.
Suffocating and drowning
in desperate dread.
Threads of composure unravel
as I remember
the approaching deadline
of that feared word:
school.
Adieu freedom.
Adieu long-stretched sun soaked days,
and lazy leisure.
Adieu summer.