Before we spent hundreds of sleepovers together, there were games of musical chairs and run rover; we were children together. We were awkward adolescents tent camping in your backyard so your parents wouldn’t bother us, we peed in the woods, we used your tennis rackets to see if we could swat bats out of the sky. Youth was effortless, wasn’t it? We used to dream about the future like it was this exciting place we’d finally get to someday – adulthood! And now here we are, and look at us. The greatest joke between us is that all we do when we see each other now is talk about the failing health of ourselves and elderly loved ones. We used to be taken care of and now we are the caregivers, and there’s nothing fun or funny about this. We each sit by hospital beds hundreds of miles apart, dreaming of the days we couldn’t wait to end, and we are still dreaming. So let’s dream of running through the woods, under fences, over creeks, standing at the edge of cliffs not even considering wanting to jump. Let’s dream of walking a mile for ice cream cones, or farther to the farm stand. Let’s dream about the blood red, sticky juice of strawberries sliding down our chins. Let’s just keep dreaming of summer.

Today’s poem prompt words were: musical chairs, effortless, and strawberries.

_{Photo by Denis Sobnakov on Unsplash}