ozone and ice cream

You’re standing on a grassy knoll and cool, salty air tempers the burning sunshine on your shoulders, and there you watch him. He concentrates on the spool, watching it spin in his hands, forgetting the climbing kite for the reeling tension between his fingers, still sticky with dried ice cream. His hair, like golden straw, smells of ozone and the grub of a week’s play, speckled with sand and grass seed. If you hover above him a bit longer: the smack of sunscreen on your nose, the same kind you wore as a child: the one in the brown plastic bottle with the knobby sides. Coppertone. And the distant smell of funnel cake, the tang of grilled meat, kettle corn gobbiness, crystallized salt on your bare, browning arms. There is nothing but us, and the kite, spinning skywards, poised like a gull.