Diary 60
Media that encapsulates the sweetness of late summer:
-Dandelion Wine (1957) by Ray Bradbury
-“Yard Sale” by Stella Blackmon
-Bella White’s cover of “Unknown Legend”
08.04.26
Visited my stepgrandparents in southern Wisconsin and spent the day lounging in a small plastic pool they’ve got in their driveway: me + two teenage siblings + a 4 year old cousin in about 2 feet of water. I laid in a reclining pool floatie that took up nearly half the space while the others shot water guns at one another, my grandma occasionally yelling “not in the face!” from her seat inside the open garage, my grandpa beside her, smoking his newports and eating smoked bluegill.
Notes from the rest of the day:
Summer from the car window; overgrown meadows, an old motel sign submerged in weeds, crowded lakeshores. Long sweaty afternoon nap. Charred bratwursts and red wine.
Heart Homes
well nothing can replace my first memory of a tornado in central Illinois my dad standing on the back porch watching the funnel cloud form over the corn field that orange-brown roiling sky a color I’d never seen before a scent I’d never smelled before like dust and electricity wrapped in a wet blanket well my heart still lives there and in the quarry where my sister and I were too afraid to jump off of the tallest rock ledge into the blue-green water but watched the other kids in the verdant summer light throwing their soft pale bodies into different shapes midair well my heart still lives there and in the antique mall alongside other hearts that remember the moth-eaten textiles tools held by hardened hands how that flannel shirt used to fit an old lover well my heart still lives there and in the forest preserve near my parents’ place where deer graze and bluebells grow along the gravel trail which is enough incentive to tolerate the mosquitoes I was actually there recently—running, and I ran till my legs were impossibly sore.
Nostalgia (The Lake at Night), by Lloyd Schwartz
The black water.
Lights dotting the entire perimeter.
Their shaky reflections.
The dark tree line.
The plap-plapping of water around the pier.
Creaking boats.
The creaking pier.
Voices in conversation, in discussion—two men, adults—serious inflections
(the words themselves just out of reach).
A rusty screen-door spring, then the door swinging shut.
Footsteps on a porch, the scrape of a wooden chair.
Footsteps shuffling through sand, animated youthful voices (how many?)— distinct, disappearing.
A sudden guffaw; some giggles; a woman’s—no, a young girl’s—sarcastic reply; someone’s assertion; a high-pitched male cackle.
Somewhere else a child laughing.
Bug-zappers.
Tires whirring along a pavement... not stopping ... receding.
Shadows from passing headlights.
A cat’s eyes caught in a headlight.
No moon.
Connect-the-dot constellations filling the black sky—the ladle of the Big Dipper not quite directly overhead.
The radio tower across the lake, signaling.
Muffled quacking near the shore; a frog belching; crickets, cicadas, katydids, etc.—their relentless sexual messages.
A sudden gust of wind.
Branches brushing against each other—pine, beech.
A fiberglass hull tapping against the dock.
A sudden chill.
The smell of smoke, woodstove fires.
A light going out.
A dog barking; then more barking from another part of the lake.
A burst of quiet laughter.
Someone in the distance calling someone too loud.
Steps on a creaking porch.
A screen-door spring, the door banging shut.
Another light going out (you must have just undressed for bed).
My bare feet on the splintery pier turning away from the water.
