Used to the cold and happy in sweaters, I'd stepped off-balance at the shock of a few warm degrees; now it's climbing slower and I dream of summer. It's always summer in Connecticut, though, or more rarely on Cape Cod - but those are the good days. Stick with Enfield, biking to summer school with Christine Reynolds, paying a quarter to hang out at the public pool with Misty and Michelle, stealing cigarettes from my mother in my jewelry box and rationing them out at home, up in the loft of the crumbling garage/barn. Warm and sticky but not hot, cold dew feet, kiddie pool for showing off the bikini with no breasts to hold it up, red with white polka dots. Joints and Lithium in the mud and concrete, watching tires float by on the river. Finding ferns and violets in the shade of a maple tree on the map before our house or our barn or even the town, rustling. I remembered what 'loam' was but forgot to say so in the form of a question. Small classroom open windows to the sledding hill covered in summer dandelion fluff and asphalt debris.

Memory but not missing.