sweetness that melts

There’s a quiet beauty 
in the things you know won’t last 
moments already fading 
even while you’re inside them. 

Like a perfect cheeseburger 
and a good New York Knicks team on the TV, 
sitting beside your dad on the couch, 
both of you pretending the season might finally mean something, 
laughing at the same missed shots 
and talking during commercials 
about everything and nothing. 

Or a melting ice cream cone
on a burning summer afternoon,
sticky sweetness running down your hands
while you stand beside your nana
who wipes your fingers with a napkin
and tells you to slow down
even though the sun is already winning.

Or the wild splash of cannonballs
into a hotel pool on vacation
your cousins shouting,
water flying everywhere,
the future still wide open then,
before time and distance
quietly turned all of you
into strangers.

Or that last awkward conversation
with your great-grandmother
the one where you didn’t know what to say,
where the room felt too quiet
and her voice too fragile,
and you thought there would be
another visit,
another story,
another chance to listen.

There’s beauty in those moments
because they are already leaving.

Because the burger gets eaten,
the ice cream melts,
the pool empties,
the game ends,
the voices fade into memory.

And only later do you realize
the real sweetness of it all

that you were there
while it was happening,
holding something brief and ordinary
that time would never give back.