To a Small Dream

Dear summer love,
I would like to meet you…next year. It’s something that I impose upon myself, and have not had the need to enforce it yet. But next year, I’ll be ready; hopefully God will look at my heart, disregard what’s best for me, and drop you into my path.

Perhaps you will have loose black hair and a craggy, pale face. Perhaps you will be crazy, crazy enough to need medication and daily walks in the sunlight. Perhaps you will know of old pie shops hidden beneath Laundromats and have secrets as deep as the sunless ocean.

But I would like to meet you, to get to know you, to be swept away by your low voice and dark hair. I would like to be by your side for three long summer months, the last ones before I have to grow up for good. I would like to listen to music by your side, to walk along a lonely beach picking up pebbles and putting them in your pockets, to help you around your house on lazy Saturday afternoons, to do all the childish things we could possibly cram into one day together.

Maybe all I need is a driver’s license, a car, and some cash, and I could pick up my best friends. We could do all that together…but still. I still would like to be able to look back on my teenage years and see you, your dark hair contrasting with the yellow folds of my last adolescent summer.

So, if you never come to me, I’ll be all right. But I wish you would.

Maybe love,
Irene.