Summer comes faster every year.
She is watching out her window as the children dig trenches. They form teams and they pelt each other with snowballs. To the side, a girl with red mittens gathers pebbles and makes the face of a snowman. He looks serious but not stern. Then it all melts, and the children throw off their caps and kick off their boots and they run through the grass, barefoot.
Someone starts cutting the lawn. The children go inside for lunch. Someone starts cutting her lawn. The children come back outside. She doesn’t eat lunch. They come outside with baseballs, with lemonade and flip-flops. They put up sprinklers and they jump over them, again and again.
There is no spring anymore. No spring. There are bicycles and skateboards. There is an ice cream truck. Round and round, all in good fun. Two of them collide. The smaller one falls, drops his fruit pop. The bigger one doesn’t stop. The fruit pop sizzles, evaporates.
They chase rabbits. They chase each other. Someone can’t unlock the door, pounds and pounds, pees, right there on the steps.
A city truck drives down the street and someone paints markings on the trees. They are diseased. While the children are inside, putting on their swimwear, distracted, the trees get cut down. The children come back outside but they don’t notice the change.
It gets hotter. She feels the heat radiating from the windowpane. The children thin out, they scatter, they remove their shirts and stay inside. The grass turns brown. The air dances right above the street. Someone comes to her door, startling her, while she naps. As they talk, a tent goes up, giving shade. The children come back outside.
There are barbecues. There are picnics. Honeybees make a nest in someone’s gutter. The children grow, six inches at a time.
There is no fall anymore. No spring, no fall. The trees are gone; there’s nothing to turn to orange. It just goes straight to white. They pick up their shovels and their sleds. They find their boots where they left them, in piles.
And she watches as they hang lights, and she watches as they take icicles and swordfight, and she watches as they lie down and make angels. And then it’s summer again.
Posted December 22, 2009, 8 pm
