Yellow popcorn curls and June bugs, girls named June and May and April too. Southern summers smell of 1950’s funnel cakes and fast boys, faster cars and jars of strawberry jam. Brown skin kissed by boat dock bruises and cool evenings on porches older than plantations — haunted like them too. Drive-ins with Bobby and Betty, polka dots and pleated skirts, and curfews too premature. Sweet tea and back door voodoo on your sweetie — those knees need be revisited on Sunday. Sweat-beaded brows make little racing rivulets through five o’clock shadows hiding curling toes. Little Lolitas all grow up.
From Cambion to Carmen,

cream soda girls,
shaken too much in the sunshine,
*crack!*
bubbles of laughter.