My Reminder

A four hour drive up to Moosehead Lake,

My heart fills with joy;

I am the same.

My lungs breathe in

The same fresh air,

My bare feet crunch

Through the same spiky grass.

I make my way towards the crooked,

Splinter-filled,

Spider-ridden dock.

The lake water is still cold as ice.

The lawn is still littered

With potholes and tree roots.

Inside, camp is filled

With the same musty smell

And the toilet still struggles to flush.

Music of the seventies and eighties

Hums in the background

As the music of peepers buzzes

Through the thin walls.

Nothing here has changed.

While life around me is spinning

Out of my control,

Moosehead stays the same.

I arrive at Moosehead this summer

Feeling different from past years.

My mind fixated

On my friendships

Which seem to grow weaker

By the day.

My feet slump out of the car

Onto the spiked grass.

I am not the same.

Later that night,

I look up at the night sky.

The stars are glowing with a fierceness

I forgot they had.

Familiar eighties music

Plays in the background

I let myself get lost

In this moment,

I forget about my troubles.

The feelings rush back

Of who I have been here,

Even though I have changed.

Pieces of my past slip away,

But at Moosehead time stands still.

I have been the girl who runs to the dock barefoot after her parents yelled at her not to; pulling six splinters out of her heel an hour later.

The teenager who wears her flip-flops out to the dock; the spiders who live there are the size of baseballs.

I have been the girl who rolls her eyes and asks for a genre change at the beginning of yet another Prince song,

The kid who sings along to the eighties music with glee.

I have been the girl who would not get out of the lake until her lips were blue and her teeth chattering.

The one who refused to jump in the icy lake water while everyone else was swimming; a stubborn middle schooler.

All along,

I have been the girl

Who knows what she wants

And will stop at nothing to get there.

Moosehead has been the one constant

In my life;

Something for me to rely on.

I step out of the car,

And I am the same girl

With the same love

For this special place.