From the moment you step off the plane home,
you can tell that this
is a summer of “lasts”.
Three days in,
you and your brother
live under the same roof
for the last time.
Now you’ll only see him
at Christmas and Easter
and any other visits you can fit in
around the new families
you’re both going to build.
You will never know each other
the way you used to.
It will never be just the two of you
against the rest.
Three weeks in,
you spend the weekend at your grandparents’ house
and question if it will be the last visit,
as you’ve been doing for a while now.
Your cousins are there too,
and you all sleep together in the basement
on air mattresses you’ve long outgrown
and sheets worn out from all the sleepovers that led to here.
You eat too much of your grandma’s cooking at every meal
and play one more hand of cards with everyone before bed
and stay up reminiscing with your cousins even though you’re tired,
because you don’t know if you’ll ever get to experience any of it again.
Every night you go to bed
and every morning you wake up
in your childhood bedroom
that is a collage of every person you have ever been,
and you wonder if you will ever come back to this room
after this summer.
(You don’t think you will).
You step outside onto quiet streets
that can never take you where you want to go.
Soon you’ll travel them for the last time.
But for now you draw a deep breath
and miss when the air was sweet,
and every day lasted forever.
Nothing is like it was then,
but you have to enjoy how it is now,
because it will never be this way again.
One day, you’ll look back
and miss it.
Sometimes,
you already do.
