Wings

One minute, you eat your weight ten times over, your skin stretches with time, and your hopes and fears are cocooned in warmth and safety. Then, you split open and spread out in a (mostly) welcome metamorphosis.

One minute, the newness feels like shaky steps and tentative first flights. Then, the sun sets on milestone after milestone and school year after school year in a rhythm that’s somehow both meaningless and bursting with meaning.

One minute you empty backpacks, rinse sand out of bathing suits, and hand out popsicles before lunch to people who try to drink out of the garden hose. Then, you fill bags with school supplies to the soundtrack of evening crickets, and you buy mustard yellow corduroy shoes in a size that can’t possibly fit your little caterpillar who wore the tiniest sleepers the last time you blinked.

And, before you know it, summer has wings.