It’s the kind of summer heat that clings to your skin, but it doesn’t bother you because it’s familiar — like the backyard swing creaking under the weight of time, like the rhythm of cicadas in the trees, like your grandma’s voice yelling through the screen door for someone to come and flip the catfish. You’re back at her house again, in the front yard that she just made you rake.
The smell wraps around you first — cut grass, a hint of charcoal smoke drifting off the old barrel grill and the sharp, bitter comfort of someone’s cigarette burning nearby. Probably your aunt, the one who always slips you a five when nobody’s looking, the one who tells you you’re getting too grown, then fixes your plate with extra mac and cheese. It’s not the smell of one thing but of everything — the layers of memory building on top of each other like your aunt’s potato salad in the same big glass Tupperware she’s brought to every cookout since before you were born.
Somebody got the Bluetooth speaker going, probably your cousin who always DJs from her phone. Marvin Gaye and The Temptations slips into Mary J. Blige before jumping into Chris Brown and Ne-Yo, and nobody complains. Even your grandma hums along, her house slippers scraping the pavement as she tells folks to come get a plate. A dominos game cracks on the fold-out table by the driveway, and somebody yells “big six!” like it’s the lottery. You hear your aunt call your uncle “trifling” for telling the same joke he tells every year, and she’s laughing so hard she’s got to sit down, clutching her red Solo cup like it might spill all that sweet tea spiked with a little something extra.
The kids are wild, barefoot and grass-stained, running up and down the patchy lawn as if it’s their own private kingdom. Beads bounce at the ends of braids. A little boy with a ketchup-stained shirt lets off a water gun blast and gets chased by a pack of cousins with tangled afros and sticky fingers. Someone shouts about getting the folding chairs from the trunk, someone else is dancing with a rib in one hand and a paper plate in the other. It’s chaotic, but it’s a good kind of chaos — the kind that smells like cocoa butter and burnt hot dogs and safety.
Fold-out chairs form a loose circle on the lawn, some occupied, some already sunken in from years of use. Kids zigzag through legs, duck under the grill table and get yelled at half-heartedly. “Hey! You gon’ burn yourself!” — but nobody actually stops them. Two cousins braid each other’s hair in the shade, their fingers moving fast and sure, beads clicking in rhythm with the music. Another cousin’s getting roasted near the car for wearing jeans in the heat. “Boy, you know damn well it’s too hot for all that!” He grins, sipping from his Styrofoam cup like he knows he deserves it.
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The sky softens as the sun begins to dip, casting that golden, honey-colored light over everything — the side of the house, the glint off of someone’s hoop earrings, the sweat on your forehead. You sit cross-legged in the grass, thighs sticking to the earth, cup sweating in your hand. Your grandma’s old dog lies beside you, tail flicking constantly.
You think, “This is who I am. This is where I come from.” You think about how many stories started right here, how many things were healed or forgotten or forgiven over ribs and red Kool-Aid. You think, “Maybe I could stay like this forever.”
Then, the streetlight starts to look weird.
It flickers, faintly — not enough to alarm you, just enough to pull you out of the moment. The glow has shifted, it’s cooler now, less golden, more pale. You blink. The music is still playing, but it sounds far away, like it’s coming through a wall. You turn your head, expecting to see your cousins still running wild through the yard, your aunt hollering from her lawn chair, your uncle licking barbecue sauce off his thumb.
But they’re gone.
The domino table is empty, pieces scattered mid-game like somebody just stepped away. The speaker still buzzes, but nobody’s near it. The grill smokes gently to itself, unattended, and the red Solo cup your aunt was holding sits upright on the arm of her chair — half full, but untouched.
You stand slowly, brushing the grass from your legs. The cup in your hand is warm now, the condensation long gone. The dog beside you has disappeared too. You call his name, soft at first, then louder, but all you get in return is the whisper of wind through the chain-link fence and the hum of that crooked streetlamp.
You walk to the porch. The screen door is closed, but not locked. You peer inside, half expecting your grandma to be standing at the stove, frying something, still in those worn slippers. But the kitchen is dark. The house feels … paused. Like a photo stuck in a dusty frame.
You step back, heart thudding — not from fear, but from knowing. Deep knowing.
You are alone.
The cookout was years ago. Most of them are gone now — your aunt, your uncle, even your grandma, whose house this used to be. The laughter still echoes somewhere in your chest, but the people are no longer here to make the sound. The yard is quieter than it should be. No beads clicking, no dominos slamming, no old-school R&B melting into mid-2000s hits. Just a stillness that stretches.
You close your eyes and hold on.
Try to hold on anyway — the smell of charcoal and cocoa butter, the stickiness of grass, the weight of history in a plastic fork and a paper plate. Try to bottle it all before it slips through your fingers completely.
You sit back down in the grass, legs folded just like before, even though the dirt feels cold now.
You think, “This is who I was. This is where I come from.”
And though no one is here to say your name, you whisper it to yourself, soft like a prayer, hoping maybe the wind will carry it back to the past.
Jasmine is a sophomore in Media.
