The special nights are here again. I looked at my watch last night and proclaimed out loud in my long “I” eastern Kentucky accent, “niiiiine thirty!” The sun’s evidence was still very alive providing me with pink, hazy light, enough light to dead head my geraniums and water the garden beds. I could hear kids up the street playing and rejoiced for them, their late bedtimes and unscheduled new days. I could smell the neighbor’s pool chlorine rising with the steamy, evening mist and as it entered my nose it brought me visions of crystal blue water disrupted by joyful cannonball. A June night is a shared one. I could see the glow of the neighbors cigarettes while they talked on the porch, I could feel the peach tree leaves against my back, dancing in circles while I inspected its fruit like some kind of critter. Was visited by a tiny yellow finch and a bright red one, they are keeping their eyes on the sunflowers that when opened face to sky will be seed plucked, happily. Folks drive by with windows down, teenagers that sound like startled chickens, couples keeping classic radio stations on air. I am flooded with memories of cruising for ice cream on nights like this. Open door nights.
Someone mentioned crawdads the other day, and I remembered days I spent on the creek with my friends. We plopped down camping chairs in the middle of its rippling water, and pulled the bladders out of boxed wine to pass around generously. Someone showed me how to look for crawdads, how to plunge my hand down quickly into the clear running water, pinch their backs and lift them into air so we could marvel in their size as they stretched out. Then we built a fortress from good rocks and collected a population of those creek bugs so they could set up their own, new land, form their own rules. Somehow we must have longed to be those crawdads ourselves, rescued from life under a rock, destinies fulfilled, banned together to make our own rules.
Oh June, you have retuned to us the taste of charcoal burnt hotdogs, and fire from sparklers we use to write out our names against a dark night sky. You remind us that riding a bike is something you just can’t forget how to do. You give us permission to let the kids talk us into doing cannonballs into crystal pools, and eat ice cream late at night.
Dearest readers, enjoy your day. Even if all that feels good is a bit of cool air against a hot day.
I will leave you with a summer poem. And don’t forget to reach out because I DO love to chat!
readnwrite11@gmail.com
Hiding Spots
On a walk I thought about
Little hiding spots.
Dark places beneath the trees
Wooded areas.
New worlds with different rules
Places all to yourself.
A realm to feel big in
A cleverness to enjoy
A chance to be unseen
Pretending and
Remembering make-believe.
-Sarah Justice 2026
The Mint Patch Monologue 
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