Trisha Yearwood’s “She’s in Love with the Boy” plays and suddenly it’s 1996 and I’m in the grocery store with chill bumps on my sunburnt legs. Mom asks the deli lady for one pound of turkey breast, thinly sliced. My eyes burn from searching the black and white stripes of the city pool floor for neon sticks swaying in the aqua mirage of chlorine. I rifle through the freezer bin in pursuit of a red ice pop, the kind in a plastic sleeve that always cuts the insides of my cheeks. I don’t yet know what real pain feels like.
Kelsey Blair is a West Virginia native. She lives in Louisville, Kentucky, and has a master’s degree in creative writing–nonfiction from Spalding University.