It’s June, and the heat comes earlier and earlier every year, and the grandkids are playing in a Walmart pool with the bottom lining worn white from a legacy of cousin rule. Somehow, it’s made it another summer. The sides are deflating, and the water green, but you promise to keep it up until it all falls down.
         “It’s for the kids,” you tell us, but we know you love it, because you love us, and what cousins don’t play in a cheap blow-up pool during a Cleveland summer?
         Hannah and I are nursing drinks in the garage, and even though I’m twenty-six, it’s odd to think about you watching me have a beer. You washed my bare butt in the sink, braided my hair until I cried, talked about protection while driving city streets in your van, and here we are so far away from watching fireworks on the middle school lawn. I used to think nothing would ever happen back then, but now, there’s so much to celebrate: Michael graduating high school, Desi’s baby boy, your youngest and I headed to grad school.
         Dollar Store balloons litter the backyard, and everyone stops mid-conversation to give one a good bop, passing it along.
         “Who wants dogs?” you call out, “And who wants cheese?”
         Floppy goggle straps pop out of the water just long enough for hands to be counted. I catch glimpses of my childhood, what you must have seen looking out from the plastic green chair that still sits under the kitchen window. The minnows dive back into hose water.
         “I’ll take two!” calls CJ.
         Adam says, “Me too!”
         “Wait! Who wants two?”
         I see Mom walking over with a platter of watermelon slices, lining the folding table with fixings for our family.
         “Jen, did you grab the cheese?”
         Minimizing the sisterly quarrel, I let them know that I’ve got it.
         I jog over the sweaty cement, glistening from the sun, and press the little white button on the side door handle that sticks in the heat. Slipping inside, I take in the brown square floor, the “Home is Where the Heart Is” sign, the two steps that lead into a kitchen I know like my own. I open your fridge, get the new pack of Kraft singles that I know won’t be enough for us, and grab the tub of Country Crock—in case we need it for the corn. Just to be nostalgic, I turn and open the bread box. Nothing is inside besides a few index cards, loose wrappers, a notebook filled with forgotten addresses. There is nothing less important, but I can’t help but pull it open and close, open and close, like the rhythm of an accordion. On this day, your yellow landline isn’t mounted to the wall, because it’s long gone out of style. In this version, I don’t think to check the cabinet for train schedules. Instead, I take the cheese and butter and head outside to where you stand at the grill.
         “Thanks, Becca,” you tell me.
         I don’t have the heart to tell you that no one calls me that anymore, that anyone who loves me calls me by my real name, or the nickname with three letters, but you’ve always made your own rules.
         Before I can stop myself, I blurt out, “Have you ever been to Michigan?”
         You nod, mistaking my nervousness for excitement.
         “I’ve visited Adam and Meg there once, in Ann Arbor, but I’ve never been as far north as you’re going.” Sweat drips from your brow, and you try to wipe underneath your black bangs, but the metal tongs get in the way.
         “Are you ready?”
         I know you mean for this question to be caring, to show that you’ve been listening to all my yammering on about my next three years, but all I can do is close the back of my throat and push my sunglasses higher up the bridge of my nose. How can I tell you that I’m scared to be doing the leaving this time? How can I tell you, after finally getting you back, that I’m the one choosing to move on?
         I smile, because I’m excited to start this new chapter, but God if I could live here in this moment with you a bit longer, I’d enjoy that too. I’d let the sun pour down, roast my skin, and I’d eat a cheap hot dog that you’ve grilled to a scorch, but grief only lets you rest for so long.
         I have to remind myself that this is a dream, a fantasy, a mere simulation of what I hoped today would look like. I have to remind myself that your body is probably gone, completely returned to the soil that we laid you in fifteen years ago, and that you’re nothing but a soul adrift in the universe I can’t seem to touch. I have to remind myself that I’ve had almost the same amount of time with you that I’ve had without you, and that Sadness and her brother Anger disguise themselves in briefcases and checked bags, and sometimes I can’t make the contents fit, and the container explodes and the zipper rips, and I’m left with this mess. I have to remind myself that the heat comes earlier and earlier every year, and the grandkids still see each other, but rarely, and they don’t have your pool to sink to the bottom of and watch the sun rays kiss their skin, and that they’ll never have that, and that you’ll never meet your grandchildren, and that you’ll never meet my children, and kiss their little toes or wash their bare butts in your silver sink, and that at my wedding you won’t be there to eat all my cake, but you’ll be in picture frame next to Andy, and all the other loved ones we’ve lost, and that a future without you is pretty fucking bleak.
         So in this future, I’m going to pretend that you bought a pack and not a carton, and married Brian and not Mike, and you left the drugs with your patients and not on your bedside table. I’m going to hope that it doesn’t rain on this dog day of summer, that I eat one hot dog—maybe two—and maybe you bitch out your sister because we’re Italian, and loud, and thats what we do.
         I’m going to pray for more dog days, the hot ones, with you.