Summer’s End

Your place. Not the new one with the tall shadows and the circular light switches. The old one, with the pink walls your parents chose stamped with purple paint handprints of five-year-old rebellion. With the walls covered with years of your best friend’s narwhal and otter paintings. With dents in the wooden furniture from when you used to secretly roller skate in your room until your mother walked in after a particularly loud crash. With stacks of dusty jars filled with all sorts of seeds, flowers, burrs, and nuts you collect on your Saturday morning mountain walks. Walking through your room is like walking through a museum of your heart, one I can’t help but want to be a part of.

We are cuddled under a fluffy blanket on your bed as we watch How to Train Your Dragon on your computer. Your favorite. Between animated rambles about the movie’s use of prostheses, you run your fingers through the waves of my hair. The vanilla and peach scent of your hand lotion wafts through the air. I lay my head on your shoulder as you pull me in closer. I close my eyes and think I wish we could stay like this forever.

But like grains of sand slipping down the neck of an hourglass, bits of periwinkle sky fall beneath the horizon, making way for a pretty sunset colored with all shades of pink, purple, and longing, the bittersweet sound of a closing book. When the movie ends, I give you my favorite hardcover with post-it note annotations and sepia-colored tea stains. With watery eyes, you tease me for the dog eared pages but when I ask if you like it, you kiss me and say I love it. You walk me to the front door, snaking around stacks of boxes against empty walls. Under the flickering white glow of the porch light we kiss for the last time. I open my mouth to say something, but I change my mind. Instead I say Remember me before getting into my car.

As I drive home with tear-blurred eyes trained on the road, I think to myself Maybe in a different universe.

Maybe in a different universe we could have grown up together. I could have moved here years ago, not just last summer. We could have roller skated together up and down the quiet end of Mulberry Drive. We could have played Mario Kart on the leather couch in your basement and sung bad karaoke of Britney Spears on your ancient silver karaoke machine between tournaments. We could have explored the mountains together, you filling your jars with burrs and me filling mine with shiny rocks. Some of my neon crayon drawings could have been on your wall.

Maybe in a different universe we could have had more time.