She hated
the noise and smell of
the city
streets in summer.
Car engines
buzzing and roaring.
Charred and
smoky asphalt,
the hot tar
sizzled odor she
couldn’t
shake from her nostrils.
She missed
the sound of
the brook
near her grandma’s
place, the rustling
stillness of a
summer wind
gracing the long
fields, the
scent of flowers and
sweet pies
at the fair.
A bus passed
Molly and she
coughed in a
cloud of diesel
exhaust. The
air was thick and
grey. The constant trumpeting
of car horns
and wah-wahing sirens
piercing
every echoed city canyon.
She longed
for the sun; un-obscured
by the
concrete pillars of business and
trade. She
felt sad to walk in endless
shadows
across long stretches of
hot city
sidewalks. It was a weight
she bore
heavily on her hunched shoulders.
She missed
her jean shorts and tee-shirts,
running wild
with Danny as they played
for hours
near the old wood tree fort
near the Old
Mill. They chased butterflies and
fireflies,
and were never swallowed by any
long
shadows.
Her city skin
was pale, like she’d never once
been a
tanned child of the sun. Her Danny,
out in the
field, tanned, toned, laughing as
he sat on
the back of a pick-up truck with a
cool
lemonade in his hand. Molly had an
iced Mocha
latte something she’d spilled
when nudged
by a rude businessman.
The city,
crowded, serious, grey.
Molly hoped
she could get out soon.
Hoped she
could get back to her
open fields,
sun dresses and barefoot
summer
strolls guided by moonlight
and
twinkling stars.
