In the drive thru, sun roof open, sun beating down on my head, it doesn’t feel like September.
It feels like summer.
It feels like I am sitting in the backseat of my parent’s car, drafting my grandmother’s eulogy as my son dozes beside me.
It feels like I’m still sitting on our couch, cool air streaming through our vents, steaming up the windows. The city still sunk deep in summer when my father calls to say my grandfather has died.
It doesn’t feel like I should be sitting in this sun hot car, shoulders bare, windows down, waiting for too hot coffee.
It feels like I should be on my way to or back from the community pool. My hair slick wet, chlorine lingering on my skin like semi-permanent perfume.
I see a man walking across the parking lot. It’s his shorts that catch my eye: bright blue green like pool water and shimmering in the heat. He carries two large ice coffees, sloshing like tiny, dark oceans.
He arrives at the window of beat up red truck. A lean, tan arm and the edge of a cornflower blue shirtsleeve flex as he approaches. The arm unfurls to a hand that takes one of the offered oceans.
The man in the shorts leans into the window, resting his own cup on the edge. He speaks for a few seconds, then stands and the owner of shirtsleeve comes forward. His hair is the same color as the bleached sky and it falls forward over his forehead as their faces lean close; kiss.
It’s a quick, comfortable lean in while the other leans up. Then they are separating and the man in the shorts is walking to his car and his love is starting his truck and they are leaving. I want to drive after them, call through their windows, awash with summer sun:
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Note-this piece was featured as part of Ivy Tech Community College Indianapolis’s ‘Small’ Art Exhibit in the Fall of 2019.
Brianna Pike is an Associate Professor of English at Ivy Tech Community College. Her poems have appeared in So to Speak, Connotation Press, Heron Tree, Memoirs & Mixtapes&Whale Road Review among others and she recently received her first Pushcart nomination for her essay Small Betrayals. She currently serves as an Editorial Assistant for the Indianapolis Review and lives in Indy with her husband & son.