The air was a heavy thing in August, but strong enough that a family lived on it. The brothers and their girlfriends had dinner outside for a week together in Maine, and all the corporate-sounding jobs looked the other way. It was beautiful enough to know these types of summers existed for people with so much to still lose, and only I knew it. Their voices were louder than mine, stronger, serious until they smiled at the end of their sentences. Only halfway through the week did they soften, when the girlfriends got their feelings hurt and the baby cousins arrived. The brothers carried on, drinking Surfsides in the boat and iced coffees once docked into town. On Wednesdays the boys went to the roller-skating rink, and mine was sure to hold my hand as the rest raced by.

Whether or not I stayed, this would still be a memory somehow. The long wooden tables that fit all twenty-two of us might see more or less of us next year, but there would be enough commotion and storytelling that no one would notice. Perhaps they’d never be able to go slower or ask more questions, but I’d know not to let it swallow me whole. There were no seasons in the family, though they loved New England dearly. They spoke solely of their childhood on islands called Ram and Johns. Renovations were made over the years, but the tennis courts named after them stayed the same. 

In the kitchen I held the refrigerator door in the first home that wasn’t mine but there was no chill down my spine. I couldn’t believe it could be this easy. Flip-flops left on the edge of the lake, and another pair by the porch. Their skin color pinked while mine browned, and it made me want to call my mom. How did I get here we’d say—how could we live in a country where we were so unknown to entire generations but loved fully by just one person?

Vacations always end, although we’ve already forgotten the last time it snowed on this coast. The thunderstorms roll by only while we shower and get ready for bed, untouched. I get a kiss on the cheek each night and that’s the best thing I’ll remember: the lightness of his heart on a lake so small, they call it Great Pond.

Leili Najmabadi (she/her) is an Iranian-American writer based in Brooklyn, NY. She publishes weekly writings on her Substack Between Two Years. Her work has previously appeared in Gems Zine, Pinhole Poetry, Months To Years, Scrawl Place, and Kindergarten Mag.