Golden Brown: A Time Stitched In Sun

I was seven when the sky decided to cry like it meant it.

A full storm, not soft, not gentle.
So we climbed upstairs in Grandma’s house—
the floor creaked like it missed us.
The candle flickered on the nightstand like a tiny moon,
and we went to bed with it watching over us.
My sister’s breath was warm and close,
and outside, the rain told the trees things we couldn’t hear yet.

The night hummed a lullaby of thunder.
We didn’t know it,
but we were being wrapped in a memory
that would smell like raspberry leaves forever.

We woke up early,
still smelling like sleep and candlewax.
Ran barefoot onto the cold cement stairs
that led to the downstairs kitchen,
our feet catching little puddles of leftover night.
The air was damp,
but the sun had already forgiven the storm—
it warmed my light blonde hair like it missed me.
The wind played in my sister’s brown curls,
and we laughed just because the sky was blue again.

Outside on the wooden table,
Grandma was already waiting.
The tea was steeping—
raspberry leaves, still dewy from last night’s rain.
Steam curled from the cup like a secret.
There were warm biscuits,
a patch of butter, and a spoonful of raspberry jam.
I didn’t know what it was then,
but I felt something bloom.
That quiet love that starts not with a person,
but with a moment.
That’s when tea became more than tea.

We weren’t cool kids.
We were the dorks—the barefoot, bug-watching, sky-talking ones.
We named ants.
We believed flowers cried,
and maybe we cried with them.
Our hearts were soft, untrained,
and we gave them away like wildflowers
to every summer that asked.

I didn’t know the word "nostalgia" yet.
But I was already living inside it.

june, sometime later

Golden brown.
Texture like sun.

That’s how the air felt when I met him.

It was June. The kind of June that hangs in the air like a held breath.
Not too hot yet, but promising to be.
I had hair the color of sunlight caught in syrup.
He had short, dark hair
and eyes like the earth—deep, grounding, warm.
He didn’t smile like the world did,
but like the world could.

We sat beneath a weeping tree,
not near, not far.
Just enough to feel hidden.
The grass touched our knees.
The wind stayed quiet.
And I think I heard the moment stop.

I didn’t know about love yet,
but I knew what it wasn’t.
It wasn’t loud.
It wasn’t clever.
It wasn’t something you could explain to someone
who didn’t sit under that exact same tree.

It was the way he looked at me—
like he knew the storm,
the tea,
the biscuits,
the barefoot mornings,
and the birds that sang in the after-rain hush.

He looked at me like he was already in the memory.
And somehow, that made it real.

Now I drink tea
and the steam still whispers
the things I haven’t forgotten.
Raspberry leaves.
Butter on biscuits.
The floor creaking.
The sun in my hair.
The weeping tree.
The boy with earth-eyes.

I was born in 2005.
But sometimes I think I was born every time
the wind moved through my sister’s hair,
or every time I tasted rain on a petal,
or every time I fell in love with a morning
that didn’t ask me to grow up yet.

And I carry those mornings with me.
In every cup.
In every sunray.
In every poem I write
for the not-cool kids who still glow.

"Never a frown with golden brown.
  That’s where my tea love started.
  And that’s where I found him—under a tree that wept and a sky that didn't."

by Onnaya