Freshly cut grass is summer and heat. It’s my younger brother’s laugh and grape popsicles with two sticks instead of one. It’s the interrupting blurb of machinery followed by a new wave of sharp, earthy air overwhelming the lungs. The smell burns like the sun, slow and soothing.

It’s jumping into the pool after a running start. It’s chlorine and beach balls and lemonade and big fluffy towels. It’s the anticipation of the beach, waiting just minutes down the road. It’s distinct, piercing tang that carries childhood in its wake. It brings with it memories of sprinklers and red faces, lungs bursting from laughing and running, feet itching from the damp blades of shaved turf.

We paid no mind, just went on playing, jumping from water games to tag to finger painting, the rubbery scent of the Crayola paint cutting through the overwhelming aura of the newly mowed lawn, baking in the summer light. The paint is sharp, distinct, so easily described as a twin to the grass, yet so impossibly opposite. It is cold, sharp, metallic. The grass is warm, soothing, organic.

They twist together in a strange dance, opposing and yet forever intwined, holding with them the lingering shadow of remembered years.