Do you remember
your old house?
The one with the fire pit,
and that splintery wood porch falling to pieces.
I must have gotten stabbed
a bajillion times.
What about your fat, striped, grumpy orange tabby cat
so ironically named Sunny
who used to come and go as he pleased,
suddenly disappearing only to turn up again in a week.
I always wondered
just where he’d gone,
and why he’d ever bother to return.
Remember your nasty Doberman?
Just a puppy,
but still,
large enough to raise whiplashes on my back.
And do you remember
your tiny little creek?
Such a small stream
seemed so huge,
teeming with all sorts of squirming life.
We used to take your dad’s
expensive, big glass aquarium (without asking – of course he’d say no)
garish plastic butterfly nets
then roll up our camoflauge pants
bought with great regret by our mothers
from the boy’s section in Marshall’s.
Then plunge our toes
already numbed from the dewy grass
into the icy water
creep up on the slimy green frogs
shattering their world
with one expert swipe of our nets.
Their sticky little bodies would struggle against us,
strange reptilian pupils dialating in fear.
Wriggling and kicking out
with their long legs and webbed feet,
don’t you remember?

Run. Run fast,
barefoot through dusty fields behind my house
past the skeletons of raspberry bushes
void of moisture
in the late summer afternoon.
The rains are coming in torrents
sheets and sheets of water.
It is running over our faces in rivulets.
Look! Those puddles of mud
full of sharp twigs and gravel
are mixing just perfect.
We’ll chase each other around
smushing the gooey concoction into our clothes
hands, hair, faces
the silty substance will coat our skin like a mask
so even our parents don’t recognize us.

I miss those days.
Chasing frogs has turned
to chasing boys.
mudpies
to makeup
to cover the imperfections that make us
who we are,
turning ourselves instead to who we think
we want to be.
Playing pretend, those long summer days,
now endless summer nights,
playing a different sort of pretend,
hard to get.
These new games and secrets
are dark and deceiving.
I miss those uncomplicated, golden summer days.
where happiness
was nothing more
than a butterfly net
a creek
and
a frog.