I still see you on the porch sometimes. Today I am laying flat on the concrete and staring up at the patio furniture. The neighbors think I am smiling at nothing, but I am watching us there, eating popsicles, shaded from the August sun.

You offer me a lick of red and a drip stains my sundress. I laugh and wipe it on the old denim cushion. My hair is so short. Yours is so long. I wonder how it’s cut now. Who cuts it now. And where I put the scissors with the purple handle.

I roll over and press my lips to the pavement, where another drip had landed. There’s nothing to taste, so I flatten myself into the cement and close my eyes. I can feel all the great stones, sea pebbles, construction lunches, and volcanic ash now crushed into my cheek. I hope it leaves a mark.

I will stay here for a few minutes just to make sure, then go inside to look for those scissors. I will cut ten months from my hair and leave a mess in the bathroom. I will slip my feet into whoever’s shoes are by the door and ride my bike to the store. I will stand in the frozen food aisle, letting all the cold air out, until I find the right kind of popsicles. And if they melt on the way home and the juice soaks through the cardboard box and pools at the bottom of the bag tied to my handlebars, red mixing with purple and green, color trailing all the way down Skylark Street, I will poke a hole and suck it straight from the plastic.

They were sugar free and still the sweetest taste I remember.