Splintered wood benches and aloe-drenched sunburns and my clipboard covered in i-zone picture stickers of fast, loose friendships and learning to dive from my third-grade camper
and oh that eternal crush on Matt Walton. Each day a run-on sentence from the one before.
Checking the schedule at the start of each week: which days do his cabin and mine share the pool? Shaving my bikini line with a Daisy razor for the occasion and tubing down the Snoqualmie river, believing all of this would always be here.
That this sliver between childhood and adulthood would always belong to me.
It vanished from my skin the day I started a job with health insurance or the day I got pregnant or when I sold off the relics of my childhood bedroom for a quarter a piece.
Youth and summer aren’t eternal; even crushes are transient.
But when I reminisce about the days before reminiscing, I remember. That Fourth of July night on a scratchy plaid blanket, Tim McGraw’s greatest hits my soundtrack, holding hands or wishing to. When I only knew bug bite surrenders around campfire and ice cream sandwiches stuck to my fingers the day after still.
Holly Pelesky writes essays, fiction and poetry. She has an MFA and an MLIS from midwestern institutions. Her prose can be found in CutBank, HAD, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, other places. Her collection of letters to her daughter, Cleave, was published by Autofocus Books. She works as a librarian and a writing center consultant while raising boys in Omaha.
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