We sit with a bucket of beans between us,
You on your wooden stool and me on my concrete step.
I watch your practiced hands pinch off ends and pull the string without breaking it.
You snap a few and toss them in the bowl then pass me one with a dark spot.
It is I who have been trusted to hold the knife this time.
With ease, I nick the imperfection and drop it to join its brothers.

We reminisce about silver queen corn, white half-runners, eating more strawberries than we brought in for the pie and a cucumber as big as my five-year old arm.
We must speak of long agos because last week is a mystery to you.
I notice the sun reflecting on your ivory hair and highlighting the white strands in my own.
I wonder when I grew up, and you grew old, and I became the one who could be trusted to hold the knife.