Summer souvenirs
There is a band that practices on their porch across the street from us. On Fridays, sometimes Mondays, always in the late afternoon, the wind carries their songs through my bedroom window, the music muffled. I like to strain my ears listening to the electric guitar especially. They usually play covers (and maybe originals, I can't tell). My favourites are their renditions of Dreams by Fleetwood Mac and Six60's Don't Forget Your Roots. In my first weeks back at home, dad would tell me whenever they started playing.
In the hollowing heat of these afternoons I am transported back to childhood. When it was too hot to do anything and I was too young to have to do anything. Glimpses into worlds unseen—neighbours belting it out on the karaoke machine, a radio shamelessly on at full volume, a mother calling out to her child in the street—offer moments, brief ones, to rest from my own. To listen, to be. There's strange comfort found in hearing other people exist.
I've become used to the colours of Canterbury skies again after a long summer, when home is associated with warmth more literally. I know. I'll forget. Once I leave I will look for them in vain. This is a promise.
In fifth grade, our English teacher awarded me for a poem I no longer remember. She gave me a prize (a thesaurus) wrapped in purple paper with Best Poet written on it with black marker ink, and when I went to go back to my seat the angelus started playing. I had to stop and wait in the middle of the classroom, beside a friend and her seatmate who both read the prize as best pwet. It's a little odd, but I hold on to the faded memory of us giggling even now. Especially now, when the voice in my head starts to whisper.
The tiger's claws graze the glass as my hand moves down your shivering back. We're running out of time and we know it. We've been here once before.
In a dream. We went to the beach and it was sunny this time, but that wasn't where she was. In the living room at home, we offered to give her something she was eyeing. She said no—it's okay, I cannot take it with me. You need it more than I will. I know. I'll forget. When I return, I will look for her in vain in an incomplete house.
I felt tears in my eyes three times in that car ride, which is to say I felt love the entire time. On the way there and back, though catching up during a drive always means we have to stop somewhere. But I felt it still after, when my words were met with kinder ones. And now, as I venture out, equipped with home and February's tenderness. It was here the entire time.