The Longest Day of the Year

June gives us the longest day and we still waste most of it talking about the weather. But there's a moment— usually around seven, when the heat has finally stopped showing off and the light turns the color of honey poured slow— when summer becomes what summer actually is: not a season but a permission. Permission to eat dinner outside even though the bugs will come. Permission to stay up past reason because the sky is still blue at nine and that feels like an argument for one more hour. The neighbor's sprinkler runs onto the sidewalk and the kids don't walk around it. The ice cream truck plays the same four bars it's been playing since you were short enough to need the money handed down. Somewhere a screen door is slamming the way screen doors have slammed since screen doors were invented— that specific sound that means someone is going out or coming back and either way it's fine. This is what I want to keep. Not the trip, not the fireworks, not the version of summer that fits in a photo. Just the long light. Just the ordinary evening that refuses to end as if it knows it's the thing we'll miss the most.