When the sun stayed up late
because it wasn’t a school night,
we would spend our summer
evenings playing outside,

a pack of neighborhood kids
throwing a baseball, football, Frisbee,
whatever wasn’t stuck on a roof
or down a storm drain.

As twilight steeped the skies,
the first flashes of heat lightning
would appear and we’d gather
’round the streetlight like moths.

An older boy flung the disc
to me but his adolescent strength
spun it high into the shadows
from the trees in our yard.

I was small but fast
and made a dramatic
full stretch catch
in the dark.

No one saw me.

I returned to the light,
threw it to the next boy,
didn’t say a word.

No one would believe
me even with grass
stained knees.