it’s a cool summer night in sacramento. windows open, ceiling fans swirling, just one light on in the house right here by my bed. the last night of the state fair’s fireworks boom in the distance.

all the years i’ve been here in this town feel like several lives now. i’ve been so many people. a girl, a teen, a woman, a wife, a mom (and that’s not even counting all the hair colors). i can still remember lying in my early childhood bedroom, looking up out the window at the full moon. how summer felt then compared to how summer feels now. sometimes i even google that house and just stare at it, hoping to pull something more out of my fading memories, but that house barely looks familiar anymore. the trunk of the mulberry tree in the front yard is five times the size it was then and even has some shade to offer now. that shade is not mine. never has been mine. we only had a small little tree with a skinny trunk. that’s all my childhood summers will ever have, and i wouldn’t have it any other way.

there are no new memories in that photograph. it’s just a house now. my childhood memories no longer live there. i can’t bring those days close again. they are only getting farther away, but i hold onto the way i can still walk room to room in my mind endlessly.

the state fair fireworks grand finale goes pop pop bang pow. the end.