a tube of chemical magic
a little red straw
and a smell that definitely wasn’t good for us
but tasted like saturday morning.

the focus it took
to roll that sticky ball between your fingers
squish it onto the plastic pipe
and blow.

they weren’t like regular bubbles.
they didn’t just pop when they hit the grass.
they were weird, lumpy, rainbow planets
that you could actually hold.

oh the fierce freedom of those long summers
staying out late for flashlight tag
building forts out of dead branches in the woods,
pedaling our bikes as fast as we could to get to the beach.

those bubbles would eventually wrinkle up and deflate
leaving that weird thin skin in your hand
a brief beautiful defiance of gravity
built from nothing but a plastic bead
and a chest full of air.