Sizzling

If the sun wasn’t hot I’d have to light the moon on fire.
Because this town only comes alive when the sun rises hotter and higher.
When the heat flares and creates radiant little mirages of light at the far end of the street,
And the road sizzles and burns until it’s just too hot to walk around with only bare feet.
Firecrackers, fireflies, and stars burning yellow holes deep into the August nighttime skies.
It’s a tragedy how fast summertime flies.


Long days filled with kitschy parades, fresh markets, and crowded people’s fairs that stay busy well beyond the last sparks of fading light.
Little league games, long hikes, and shouting our dreams out with all our might.
Praying hard against fear and the devil when I hear the neighbors clamor and fight.
We were little kids but we felt like giants staying up  late, running wild, and riding bikes endlessly into the night,
If only because we felt sorrow to leave it all behind and trundle off to bed.
Like we’re trying to fit a whole year into the unbounded joy of a few warm and sunny months.
Like summer is the only chance we have to figure out how to live.
Until suddenly it’s over and we prepare to hibernate.


When I was a little boy August was always a month of bittersweet pain.
Life dragging you towards that stumbling, sweaty transition from freedom to a new 
school year—a return to all that is reliably mundane.
A month full of melodramatic goodbyes to ridiculous childhood flings,
And long afternoons spent mournfully talking about everything and nothing out on 
the swings.
Things like baseball playoff scenarios and what kind of nightmare teacher stories 
were waiting in the wings.

August’s moment of defeat always came the day my mother took us to the Walmart to 
buy school supplies.
“Don’t worry,” she consoled us. “Another year and you’ll be a little smarter, a little
more wise.”
But all I could think about was how this is what it feels like when you wake up from a good dream--your eyes open and then the dream just dies.
Autumn tends to sneak up on you like that and belligerently catch you by surprise.


Memories of months past always raced through my mind.
The stories we lived and then told to help us remember and unwind.
Considering the kind of me that was unfolding for the world to find.
Mostly I just hoped that summer made me a little bolder, more honest, more kind.
As it is when the darkness is short and my heart is able to live a little less blind.