The last couple of days there’s been a burst of light

in the midst of the falling dark.

It ignites the sky as if everything were beginning again.

This happens after storms,

so there’s a bit of green in the glow

as if pointing out the edges of a fading bruise

or some receding thought.

We set forth in this light to take the garbage out.

The kids run before me on the sidewalk

and initiate an adventure that lasts the block to the big dumpster.

These are the moments we keep—

not I remember the time when

but a wordless feeling of what it means

to be a child in summer.

I lob the garbage in the bin,

and the kids line their toes against a break in the sidewalk,

and so the way back somehow too feels like an adventure,

who can jump around the cockroaches,

get there first,

be wrapped up in home.

While we were away, the lights in the front hallway turned on. 

The once bright glare enveloping the sky

is now reduced to a gold point on the horizon

just visible above the top of the house

at the end of the narrow entryway.

It mirrors the lights that illuminate the ground

and the kids run through the soft glow

sparkling on the run-off

puddled underneath the neighbor’s air conditioner.

The vines of the ivy that’s grown but not yet clung onto the wall

hang down in bright-green tendrils

that wave with the wind the children create.

I remain standing until the tiny leaves still,

then watch how, through the window,

the children settle onto the couch with picture books.

When they call me, when I step inside,

the once endless summer night

blinks like a shutter, and the click

like a stitch lightning fast

at my side:

      this too will be a feeling,

a pucker in the fabric of their childhood

I can almost recall without touching.

Mackenzie Levitan has been living in Buenos Aires since 2013. She holds a Bachelor’s from Bard College and an MFA from la Universidad Tres de Febrero. She writes poetry and nonfiction in English and Spanish and has published in the magazine Aquilea. She is currently completing her first full-length collection of poetry in English.