excerpt from Brown Barrette in My Hair
I went there, my elementary-aged self, in a bathing suit with a towel around my neck, by walking through other peoples’ yards, as kids do. I don’t remember wearing shoes; I remember the cushion of pine straw and the rough prickly pinecones from my back door to the paved Poplar Avenue, then the soft grass and hard Fuller driveway, then silky soil before stepping onto the hot concrete foundation around the pool, the clang of the hinged door closing behind me, the squeals and splashing in front of me. Vending machine coins clutched in my sweaty fist.
Praise for “Brown Barrette in My Hair”
“Brown Barrette in My Hair” is a wonderful memory piece, where the prose is filled with sensory details that evoke our own summers at the pool, evokes those moments of being and living and seeing and feeling. As the person we once were. That young person. That person who remembers how water drenches the skin and that summer haze of sunny days. Nostalgic, yes, but it is more than that. This essay recreates an intimate slice of a world so readers, too, can plunge right in, and when we surface the light is blinding.
-Ira Sukrungruang, Founding Editor of Sweet Lit
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Winner of Sweet Lit’s 2022 Flash Nonfiction Contest
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“Brown Barrette in My Hair.” Sweet: A Literary Confection, March 21, 2023