sky-colored dirt

The sun is playing hide and seek with the clouds today and I am a sliver of light, showing myself in Kodak-framed intervals: Beaming alongside the beagle my brother named Cujo as we both await a taste of Miss Mooney's famous jam-filled cake topped with frosted-pony flair to please the city girl who swooned for wiry forelocks. Posing with a new purple Huffy — destined to be adorned with bright plastic “spokies” clinking in chorus against spinning tire rims. My baby-tooth grin gleams against syrupy skin stained by the collusion of sun and southern Italy, topped off by a curly-q pigtail swinging low and slow like my father’s heavy bag in the garage. Seven years this July, I stand nearly new in a rectangular patch of frontage green that never grows tall against our home’s weathered gray shingles. The sun is playing hide and seek on midsummer's 22nd day when Mommy and Daddy rejoice in their creation. And I am burning bright.