Summer
posted at 2:17 pm
on Jul. 24, 2010
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Long car rides with the window down, music loud, one arm hot. Feeling like you’ve had your hair blow dried except it’s just from riding your bike.
Thinking it’s 6:30 when it’s really 8:45. The slow creeping cool night spreading like a melting ice cube. Outlasting mosquitos on the patio.
BBQ tang, BBQ tongs, BBQ pineapple slices soaked in coconut milk and ground cinnamon.
The stickiness of clean cotton sheets on damp skin. Pillows that you have to turn over and turn over and turn over in search of the cool side.
Movies. Seeing them once, seeing them again. Hearing the people around you cheer in the darkness. Fireworks, a green and purple and red imitation of nature’s Northern Lights.
Between work and more work, vacation. Reading a book, cover to cover, in one sitting. Ordering a coffee, cold.
Throwing your graduation cap in the air, and then trying to find a job before it hits the ground.
Dubious glances in the mirror at your body in a bathing suit, then saying ‘What the hell’ and jumping into the water. Water in your nose. Water in your ears. Water dripping through the slats of the plastic chair that you’re sitting in, thinking about jumping in the water again.
A cold snap of beer from a hard glass bottle.
The feeling of the back of someone’s head leaning on your stomach and a rustic blanket underneath you.
A springy branch snapped back in your face as you make a short cut through the woods to a vantage point that looks out over a stream, a forest, a valley, a mountain range, the earth, the sky.
Fresh berries in your breakfast cereal instead of a banana.
Tote bags filled with cheese and crackers and towels and sunscreen.
Changing out of shorts and into a dress shirt and tie to sit in the sun and watch someone you care about marry someone they care about.
Summer.
