I suppose I long for those moments in the bright sunny parking lot far away from home again where the music is playing softly from the car and I’m smiling at the birds flying over my head and the flag is waving;
the clinking, sharp metallic sounds of the ropes and supports smacking against the flagpole are washed away with the wind and it sounds beautiful, like the early morning tinkling of the neighbor’s wind-chimes next door.
And here we are walking,
those I care about;
we are walking and there is the slap of our shoes on the pavement and it sounds so very loud in the bright sun, as if the sounds of our feet are much closer to us than even the air on our skin.
I am visiting my yehyeh and he is going to smile as bright as the sun beating down and tanning our arms and shins(oh, how easily I would tan those summers). My mom will worry and fret like she always does these days and she will make sure everything is okay- grandpa insists everything is just fine. Even during these times I longed for the neighborhood days- a memory within a memory- running down the sunny sidewalks, opening the hot metallic gates that have eaten up all of the sun’s rays- and then running through the mulch with my sister, smiling and happy and swinging and playing. Those days were full of smiles and small complaints about things that didn’t really matter- there is mulch in my shoe and I wanted the other swing, not this one. Then we would run home to hug amah and she would laugh and tell us she loves us ‘all the way from your head to your toe!’ and then I would giggle so hard- it always made me laugh, the way she said it and tickled my face and smiled! After that, time passed so quickly and everything changed in less than an instant. Now there is less talking and more of our worries are in our own heads and not shared at all.
Now the sun does not shine so brightly and the strange black hole that is eating the earth very slowly inches its way further and further into view, like the sun making its way down, down, down the sky until it is barely on the horizon...