Summer Lives in the Fruit Bowl

Summer is almost always rotten to its core. Well, not at first. At first, it’s bitter. It hardens as winter melts into spring, and as spring makes way for summer, it’s bitter at first. Similar to a peach when it’s not yet ripe, it crunches like an apple, and it’s not yet sweet. The taste is bland on your tongue, bitter almost, at first. Summer is a peach. Bitter, sweet, then rotten to its core. 

The first hints of summer (longer days, warmer nights, stone fruit) are always hopeful. It seems to signal a universal end to something dreary, something dreadful, and it marks the beginning of something new. What exactly? I’m not sure, it’s just something. It’s almost a renewal of some sort. As animals emerge from hibernation, we seem to crack open our winter shells, armor harbored around our bodies to protect us from the shrill of the cold months, and we shake out our limbs to receive the warmth of the impending summer sun. Something has arrived. June; hope has arrived. 

Hope can be deadly. It’s a reminder of what good could happen but there are no promises of it coming to fruition, even when we wish on every shooting star and fallen eyelash and birthday candle. It’s not a guarantee. It’s a guess at best, an assumption, a dream. Hope lingers long past its expiration date, and you can’t help but keep it like spoiled milk in the back of your fridge. Hope is a ticking time bomb. But still, we cling to hope, even as the countdown nears closer and closer to zero. We grip it in our fists and carry it wherever we go because hope is the belief that everything will be okay. Hope calls for us, beckons us home like a beacon. Hope, it is the beginning of summer. 

If June is hopeful, then July is the flesh of the peach as it ripens. It’s the juice that runs down your palm as you take the first bite into the supple body of the fruit. It’s the explosion of sweetness in your mouth, ambrosia spreading across your tongue, seeping into all of your tastebuds. Your fingers are sticky from the honey, but you embrace it. It is erotic, almost. The heat that fills the air encompasses us like a lover. We flush it away by stripping down and jumping into the lake, the cold water calming down our burning bodies but never our tempered hearts. July sleeps under the pink skies, reveling in the cicadas that sing to her as the sun sets beyond the horizon.  She runs through the open fields, barefoot with her white dress flowing behind her. Nothing can seem to stop her, except August. August chases her, playfully at first. They scamper around like little kids until August grabs her by the waist and they both go tumbling into the grassy field. 

August, she is the eldest sibling. She is the voice of reason, whether she likes to be or not. She reminds us that nothing lasts forever. Not hope, not July, not the ripe peach. August is summer beginning to rot. It is curiously silent, with blazing noons and hot nights that almost seem to last a little too long. August is your mother calling you home for dinner when you don’t want to leave your friends, but you have no choice. She is the peach on the dinner table, half-eaten, the first signs of decay starting to appear. Fruit flies, not enough to become an issue, but enough that they are noticeable. August is the bottom of the empty wine bottle. There are only a few drops left, and you did not realize you had drunk so much. The room is spinning, and you feel warm and fuzzy all over and not in the good way. August strokes our hair as we struggle to fall asleep, and tomorrow is September.

Summer is nostalgic. It’s sweet in all the right places, and it’s filled with hope and thunderstorms and sweet magnolias and un-kept promises. It’s the laughter of a past lover and the kiss of a stranger. Summer is my girlhood reincarnate, racing on bikes around the cul-de-sac and sulky nights spent on the soccer field. It’s sunburns and mosquito bites everywhere but who cares because it’s summer! It’s jazz, smooth and silky. It’s seductive. Yet still, summer is almost always rotten to its core. It reminds us that it is only here for the time being, like an old friend visiting. But don’t worry, they promise. They will be back soon. They will return, so so soon.