Do You Remember Me, August?

It never really takes me a long time to fall asleep so I open the windows, letting the hot summer air waft into my bedroom. It is still; the city is quiet. Not even the cicadas are awake anymore. I stretch my legs out, letting one stick out from underneath the comforter, a warm breeze tickling my bare flesh. It is not completely dark; street lamps glow dimly through my blinds, only offering the outline of my dresser in my faint line of vision. Not even the sound of cars pierce the heavy silence. It seems as if everything is holding its breath, listening for something, waiting for something. It takes me a long time to fall asleep. I have tomorrow lodged in my throat. August is here.

Give me eight months and what do I even do with them? I try to recall what I did in July, all the things I accomplished. I think of all the people I spoke to, the places I visited, the books I read. Was it any different from June? Was it any different from May? I feel as if my feet have found a home in wet cement and a June and a July of another summer has lapsed by. The beginning of summer is like stepping into the home of someone you love. I know this smell, I know where everything stands, I know that it is the place I belong. But I do not notice that the days are growing shorter, very subtly, as if behind closed doors, and soon I will have to leave. Sometimes it seems to me that summer is not real. Well, yes, we have our Junes and Julys and Augusts, but I do not feel like I am fully existing. It’s quite difficult to articulate, but it feels as if I am shoved in between the days, in between the months, and I can never seem to fully catch my breath. Hours seem shorter than they are, days have vanished, and I blink and the unborn fall is suddenly at conception. I am so dizzy; I am so lost. 

Am I cursed to be in a state of eternal oblivion? I can not recall a time in my life when I have been absolutely certain that I was where I was meant to be. Has anyone felt this certainty? I am envious of them. I long to be unfettered from my thoughts, unbound by the shackles of the things I desire. Is that not the root of all suffering? I don’t believe that I am suffering. No, that would be a bit dramatic. But I am on the edge of something similar, some type of sadness that doesn’t quite swallow me whole but it slowly eats away at me. I am a never-ending meal. It is the same as the rift between summer and fall, the last weekend of August before we are thrown back into reality. That’s what summer feels like, doesn’t it? A state of living in the in-between. The ambiguity is suffocating, and it is like this every year. I can never seem to figure it out, time and time again.

During the winter and spring months, I yearn for the warmth of summer. Yet when June passes and July arrives, I shield myself from their smiles. I take cover in the shade when the sun tries to say hello. In January, I long for the glow of August, but when she walks up my driveway, I know I will only be colder when it’s over. So in some pathetic excuse of self-preservation, I do not shake August’s hand. I look past her, searching for fall. I wish this was not the case. I miss that Sunday in May when I was not anxiously awaiting a funeral that was not meant to happen yet, the death of summer, the death of my youth. I am ashamed of the pessimism that swells in my soul like a wave about to crash over. I know that in December I will look back at right now and wish I did not waste my days away drowning myself in poetry and the ink from my pens. I will regret not lifting my head up from the paper once in a while. But by then it will be too late. 

Forgive me, summer. I do not know how to endure you yet. Forgive me, August. You are easy to hate. 

I leave the bottom of the posters on my wall untaped. August stretches long before me, and I open the windows, letting the hot summer air waft into my bedroom. The breeze that drifts in tickles the art on my walls. The prints flutter up and down; my walls are breathing. I am breathing deeply. No, not breathing. I am sighing, heavily, letting out a breath I have been holding since last year. Though August has just begun, I can feel the summer season coming to a close. It smells of ripe peaches and rain on warm cement and nostalgia. September is just around the bend. I’ll meet you there, okay? Just give me a call.