In Summer

Two adolescent boys are walking down the sidewalk carrying their battered skateboards. Their shirts are off and stuffed into the backs of their cargo shorts. One boy has auburn hair and pale skin, his curls riding atop sloping shoulders. The other has skin the color of walnut shells and dark hair, he is the shorter of the two. Each movement is made without haste--the languid crawl of July. I imagine they must be talking about ramps and jumps, or the girls from those classes they left weeks ago.

Now, out of view, I wondered how I looked at that same age—brown hair blonding in the acid bath of swimming pools and relentless sunshine, hazel eyes peering toward a future vague and imposing, so much less predictable than the awkward movements I made on my own skateboard.

Hot concrete, chlorine, and freckled shoulders: these are the trappings of summer. Those, and the whispered approach of autumn in the few leaves that dare to fall early from the tree.