This is for summers spent in skirts that hung on hip bones from when that was still a relevant trend; this is for popsicle juice dripping off our elbows onto the sidewalk like watercolors; this is for baby pink flip phones tucked into the sole of a Nike sneaker because we run with our shoes off; this is for dirty, blistered feet cooking on the concrete like hot dogs grilling on the Fourth of July; this is for bike rides until the streetlights come on through the same neighborhood up that one big hill that leads to the church; this is for when we took turns climbing up two trees because we can only fit three at a time; this is for loose two by fours of wood stacked and leaned against trees creating our fort and if we don’t like it that’s okay because we will tear it down and rebuild it all different tomorrow; this is for scrawny legs running through chigger-infested grass to get to the pond behind that one neighbor’s house that owns that loud chihuahua, where we will reach our bodies over muddy water to grab cattails with our sticky hands with gradually forming calluses; this is is for scratchy scabby skin with pink polka-dot rashes; we knew better than to touch that grass but just past that pond is a sewer pipe that passes under a road and it’s always dried up; it’s blocked off by a gate we have to yank open then suck in our stomachs to squeeze through; it’s too hot in the summers here and the heat doesn’t reach down there and it makes us feel cool because we weren’t supposed to be there; this is for before we lost our baby fat and before I needed a trainer bra; before the last time we played in the street; before we came home from school one day and stayed inside.
This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Louisiana Tech chapter.