Summers in my city have always been like a wide-eyed doe, running around a doused bonfire in the forest.
Never really leaving, except for lapping up a hearty sip from the bustling brook nearby.
Summers in my city come pedalling on a lavender Ladybird bicycle catching butterflies and moths in its stride.
Raspberry dollies, melting tar, crowded water bodies and mango jars.
A pleasant idleness spent listening to a messiah’s songs in the shade of blazing Poinciana.
Summers in my city are simple.
They don’t ask for much,
Just quiet afternoon naps and entwined legs dangling from rooftop gaps.
Connect-the-dots constellations in the clear night sky.
A gush of wind,
Summer’s first kiss,
Summers in my city, come running barefoot, and catch you off guard
And leave; smelling just like a mixture of my Granny’s Fairytales and petrichor from first rains.
Summers in my city, are a womb of nostalgia, blooming like a dandelion.
And you see, memories have a way of finding their way back to us.
An abandoned collection of ice-cream sticks lying in your drawer,
the sky turning into the exact shade of blue as the eyes of someone you once knew, the creak of the swing that saw your first tooth fall.
And this time, as I return home for summer, I find my childhood
in a pastel yellow frock beaming at me, sitting on the very same swing, on the porch of yesterday,
Pretty flowers in her hair and a burst of carefree laughter in her eyes,
Swinging away into tomorrow’s dust.
And I know, if I tilt my head and squint my teary eyes a little more,
I can still lend, years of sunflower memories, a hand.
But those moments I decide, are for another time.
Another summer in the city.
Another lifetime.
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