Shadows on the Old Porch Swing

The swing still creaks like it remembers.

Back and forth—

a rhythm that mocks the ticking clock

we no longer keep on the wall inside.

I sit here alone now,

but not really.

Because shadows gather beside me,

soft and silent,

like the ghosts of warm evenings

and half-sipped lemonades.

My grandmother’s laugh—

I swear it clings to the breeze.

The way her apron fluttered

as she brought out pie.

The rustle of my father’s newspaper,

his boots propped just so.

The whispers of stories

my mother spun like gold

before the stars came out

and the mosquitoes learned our names.

All of it lives here,

etched into peeling paint,

soaked into the porch floor

like spilled tea and spilled secrets.

I remember my brother

pushing me too high—

how I screamed and laughed

until the sky nearly caught me.

Now, the chain on the right

hangs looser than the left.

Funny,

how even metal knows absence.

There are no voices now.

Just the creak,

the hum of distant cicadas,

the sharp scent of memory.

But I stay,

swinging gently between

what was

and what never will be again.

Sometimes I talk aloud—

to no one,

to everyone.

To the shadows that stay

when the sun slips behind the barn

and the world forgets

we were ever here.

I’ll keep sitting,

until my own silhouette

becomes one of them—

just another soft echo

in the dusk light,

swaying with the wind

on this old porch swing

that never stops singing

of home.