Early August Mornings

My mom and my step-dad have always been porch sitters, yard sitters, and now they've transitioned to the garden. The conversations of my late childhood and adolescence were formed around our front porch swing, lawn chairs pulled around, us children hanging off the posts, the steps, flipping cartwheels in the grass, pulling up a slab of concrete to rest and catch our breaths. 

These days when I travel back to my hometown, falling into those conversations are easy. The coffee cups still in hand, their lit cigarettes burning through the evening air, flecked orange against a black backdrop. In Cuba, the night sky gets so dark, barely illuminated by the handful of streetlights in town.

The solitude of natural growth, the teasing of summer mosquitos, the conversations transform with our years, but the set never ages.