My eyes follow the orange streaked sky of the setting sun.
Nothing never felt so good to do.
A light breeze, refreshing,
An invisible brush that flows through my hair.
Laughter bubbles forth like a rich spring,
Chubby “Cal” is doubled over a scrawny, beat-red Adam,
Sprawled across the lush green, sweet, fresh cut grass.
He has
squished
the brownies into an imprint of his belly,
our smuggling operation humorously sabotaged by our reason behind it,
Dinner’s reminding barbeque being too long away.
No matter, we race to our jungle gym safe haven,
Invigorated to be free of elementary worries.
Nothing never felt so good to do.
Time speeds up, we laugh ten-times over,
Plot against the other Moscow Embassy children,
We dream about the girls we ‘like’, protesting and quarreling over each other’s teases,
Yet, individually, all secretly pleased.
Moments of life flash by as if skipped,
Never to be retrieved but from distant, hazy memories
Similar to a parent’s clinging to their children’s old baby clothes,
Reminiscing of the times when life was so simple.
The time comes when we say ‘das vadanya’,
each of us taking our separate ways.
To Africa, another tour, back home to the U.S. for me.
We meet again, but it has changed.
Too real to be that brief summer’s day,
So very long ago,
When nothing never felt so good to do.