Hometown Curb, July

We share a twin popsicle, cherry-blood
half-moons melting down our fingers.
The H Mart clerk shortchanged us again,
you complain, licking syrup off your thumb.
Sitting on the curb, we are sticky-kneed,
full after a day of slushies, blue tongues,
& sunburns. I flick a pebble
into the street—clink—it rolls
into the gutter with a flattened coke can
& one cicada shell clinging to concrete.
We talk about nothing & everything:
how so & so is packing her life into boxes,
how Mom will be gone for a week,
how the beach smells different now
(no shells & sunscreen, but salt & diesel),
how Jack’s ice cream stand closed in March,
how our bikes are rusting sentinels
next to the egg-shell white fence.
Stretching the hours, you say
remember when—& I do.
But what has changed in this street?
Piercing the air, our neighbour’s
screen door still screeches. A
sloth bandaid still sits on my knee.
Across the street, the old man’s
sprinkler still hisses at the same broken angle
as last summer. The slushie stain on your shirt
is blooming now, blue-violet as dusk.
We peel ourselves off the pavement.
Your pinky is hooked in mine, loose,
the way we held on at six, crossing roads.
Look both ways you whisper. I don’t, as usual.
& we step into the crosswalk,
stained cheeks glowing
under the streetlight’s yolk.