Denial

Summer is over my head like a hood and I don’t want to come out.  We’re so far into summer I can’t quite remember the softness of spring or regime of school, and just far enough from September it feels like it may never come.  Puddles of pjs and cereal have pooled around the sofa alongside flip-flops, small bright socks, bathing suit bottoms.  No one questions pink lemonade for breakfast, or watching too much TV.  We sleep with sand in our beds, and eat peas until the vines are empty, feet still in the garden. 

I’m trying to forget that summer ever ends and that Jane will start first grade, her first year full day.  Or that Henry will go to school for the first time.  I’m lapping it up.  Staying deep in summer, lush with denial, flooded with flushed faces, bare bodies, beer.  For now it’s summer.  All day long.