Sticky Sweet

Summer taste like a cherry popsicle because Jessica cried when I said I took the last banana but don’t tell mom I dripped it on the couch and how many times did she tell us to take them outside anyway.

Tastes like it’s too hot to cook so grab the canned tuna and bread and some of that good cold chicken and get your butt out here by the kiddie pool.

Tastes like Dad got too involved in a heated conversation with Mitch and now our charcoal briquettes are indistinguishable from the hamburgers we formed this afternoon, wet towels around our shoulders to cool us all off, kitchen curtains with the little hens drawn down to keep out the sun, pulled up by the breeze like the skirts we twirl in the backyard spinning and spinning and spinning and all fall down.

Summer tries to taste like pasta with red sauce and giant meatballs at Mary’s because they’ve got central air and can make summer taste like winter but fails as the controlled environment wish-washes together all the flavors of every season and summer can’t really taste like Mary’s spaghetti dinners where we eat with forks and run around with our sweatshirts on because our skin is too accustomed to the heat. Summer is for casual nakedness, eating with our hands, a little grit rubbing off with every bite, soggy from chlorine. Summer brings its own flavor.

Tastes like watermelon dribbling down our forearms, waiting to collect the sand, plaster it to the rivulets dissecting arm and legs and feet and go wash yourself off in the ocean and slip your flipflops back on pray and pray and pray you won’t get sand in between your toes though they are exposed to the elements. Tastes like coconut sunscreen and burning bodies, tastes like fish and chips on the beach for dinner and crap, kid, how many fries you gonna lose to the seagulls and fresh-turned ice cream that always tastes a bit like butter, and how many songs can you listen to before you fall asleep, wet hair cold in the car’s AC, changed into pajamas behind a towel held up to the window of the car fall asleep sipping sippy cups of lemonade, don’t let it spill cause all the flies will come.

The warm silk of the corn still stuck from shucking under fingernails as more gets in our teeth, pulled from dusky stalks we grew with our own hands covered in fancy butter because we deserve a treat, goddammit, we worked hard all day, Dad’s face red and sweaty, always a little dirt clinging to his upper lip, cheap beer and heat and tar and garden loam.

Tastes like rhubarb pursing our lips straight from the garden Sarah says it will poison if you don’t add a little strawberry to the pie, but I can’t imagine loving anything as much as the sour stalks of red and strawberries die too easily, trampled by deer that get in past our meager defenses. Summer tastes like nothing is safe. Birds ripping blueberries under nets that promised to hold them off. We cry over every last red jewel, not knowing for years we were meant to wait till they turned blue and soft and sweet.

Night cools our driveway and the coals from the burnt burgers still glow, spit out the taste of bug spray, see who can spit farthest, some adult hand pulls out pillowy marshmallows we squirrel in our cheeks until caught, chocolate and cardboard-cheap graham crackers to hold the ooey with the gooey as we burn our fingers, tongues, cheeks with the best parts of summer.