bittersweet — McKenna Casey

bittersweet

McKenna Casey

In early June, I remember, how those three crabapple trees would bloom and create that little canopy, and how I would dance through the white and yellow violets beneath it in bare feet, fearful of the bees but unafraid of the scraped palms and skinned knees, and I would climb on that lichen-wearing rock and haul myself into their branches. How tall those trees seemed then, how small I was. The thing I remember most about my childhood was the smell. When the breeze in the summer evenings was in just the right direction and I could practically taste the untamed grapes growing at the edge of the woods. Hours in the grass at the side of my house, pulling up wild chives by the fistful until my hands were sticky with it, the sour crush of just-ripe blueberries on my tongue, on my lips, and of course. The crabapples. Rubbing the sage and lavender that my mother grew in the patio garden between my fingers, on my wrists and neck like perfume. My childhood was a sensory experience, the press of dirt under my fingernails, how that metal grate my father had laid over the creek had dug into my stomach, how I hadn’t cared, just kept hunting for crayfish and trying to catch minnows in the net of my fingers. When we left, I’d wanted to leave a piece of myself behind, something tangible, so I buried one half of my favorite pair of earrings down by the stump in the backyard. I haven’t been back, but I’m sure they tore that stump up, along with the floors in the hallway and the carpet in the living room. So my little “I was here” is gone, and all I have are the memories, so real I can taste them. So real I can hold them in my hands.