Prematurely: Summertime

I remember sitting pretty in the dog park

with my purple dress on

and taking walks the long way home,

through the neighbors' lawn.

In May my mother and I picked

strawberries in the morning dew

and talked about the way things were

when she'd been twenty-two.

You followed me to the bend in the creek

back behind the old highway road.

There we put our feet in the water 'til the fish

came to nibble and suck our white toes.

We were late for dinner and naked as Adam

sitting back to back in the setting sun.

Then you drove me home in your father's car, 

and I fell asleep against the window.

It didn't matter the next week, though 

when the spring as it was began to show.

As cold as kids without their shoes

and slow as bums without their booze

we turned our faces inward and away

while we tried to keep expectations at bay.

But we brushed aside the risk of memory

instead deciding it best to be free

because Summer comes just once a year,

and in the Winter our hearts will freeze.