She is seven and the world speaks in whispers only she can hear—the grass blades bending their green heads to tell her about the earthworms dancing beneath her bare feet, the dandelions sharing gossip about which wishes came true last Tuesday. Her fingers are stained purple from blackberries that burst like tiny suns against her tongue, and she knows, with the certainty that only children possess, that the fireflies gathering in mason jars are writing love letters to the moon
The afternoon stretches endless as honey, thick with the drone of cicadas and the sweet ache of growing. She is a collector of moments—the way shadows move like living things across her grandmother's garden, how the old oak tree hums lullabies when she presses her ear to its bark, the secret language of crickets that sounds like tiny prayers being whispered into the dark.
In this suspended time, she is both utterly small and magnificently infinite, her laughter echoing off the water where minnows dart like silver thoughts through the shallows. The sun kisses her shoulders until they glow golden, and she understands that she is made of the same stuff as summer itself—all light and warmth and the kind of magic that only happens when you're young enough to believe that flowers can dream and butterflies carry messages between worlds.
Years later, when summer tastes different and the magic has learned to hide, she will remember this: the weight of wonder in her chest, the way the universe felt small enough to hold in her cupped palms, and how she once knew the true names of everything that mattered.
**all images created by me