I remember this feeling

the sun sets on this couple blocks of town, in the still warm early fall

just as it did when I was a (not so) little girl

In those days I spent hours jumping on a trampoline singing along to Ani Difranco on my walkman

or swinging from the branches of the tree that provided cherries for the desserts that were served in the underground cafe that my neighbor ran out of his living room on the weekends

my affair with the woman neighbor was a scandal for some of the neighborhood but at 15 I felt plenty olde enough to pretend that we were mermaids while I lost three pairs of socks and two bras to her cluttered corners

those days tasted like turnovers and the second half of a 40 oz of Big Bear

and in my memory it was always this time of day, the time when afternoon anticipates the middle of the night

I am two blocks and twelve years from that place

a place full of ripe plums

decomposing pears

worm holes

cherry pits getting lodged between my toes, homemade gravy, sunkissed smiles,

the first awkward adjustment of a strap onto still forming hips

napkin drawings, hugging strangers

and thinking only in punk lyrics

those memories are Watertower Pink

a very particular pink made of sunset reflected off the waterpower onto the tips of cedar trees

Tonight that color sends an adolescent taste of lonesome and longing riding over my tongue, along a wave of now cold coffee

while I wait, like that little girl, to see what the night wants from me…