Of course I want to go back and capture that night in that mason jar, the one with former lives holding pickled apples, apple cider, homemade wine. I would have mixed up the fireflies that danced outside your bedroom with the Everclear mixture spiked with an apple pie flavoring so it wouldn’t make me gag, like the way I almost threw up in your sink after you gave me a shot of your first batch, just to try a little. You warned me first – it’ll go down hard and you’re not gonna like it much. You were right. Your palm pressed against my back as I leaned over your kitchen sink, which was silver and bright against your bare bulb apartment. That summer, everything smelled like your old pickup truck and felt like grass in the morning dew. Were we more tender then, or was life just softer? The moon didn’t care that it was shining on us then and it doesn’t care we haven’t traced its phases on the map together in the five years since. I am far past trying a little; now I take full swigs in the back of cars without fear. Summers feel hotter than they used to, and I recently heard fireflies are going extinct. Everyone else has moved on but I’m still palming the glass of the mason jars that once were, from many moons ago.

Kirsten Reneau is full of yearning nostalgia and she’s making it everyone’s problem. She’s on twitter: @reneauglow.

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