It's Coming

I come home and tell my family I can smell it, spring, pink cherry blossoms and light, in the distance of three months the hot smell of plum trees and nights that start well after bedtime.

It’s because I farted, Bryan says.

But it’s not and I shake my head annoyed. I feel safest in the summertime, and already I am biting blueberries in two and pushing the crushed halves into Ozzy’s open mouth. It has hardly rained all winter, though a few nights ago it did just a little. In the morning Zoey woke up and said she heard gumdrops falling on the roof while she slept, and when I laughed and told her it was actually rain, she looked at me as if I were the crazy one.

And maybe I am. For remembering the temperature of smell. For waiting on the ionic taste of pavement at night and how I want to wrap it around me like a towel.
1970something, sitting on the cement edge of a drained pond at a neighbor's house sometime in August. We threw dirt clods down the hill and the yarn in my hair was bright yellow. If I think hard enough I can still hear the slack tymbal sound of the cicadas.