summer is an open window-
I fall asleep on my belly and dream of pink skies
I forget that I am no longer a teenager, because the longing for summer is still a deep twinge in my chest.
The weather warms and the sun on my skin makes me feel less angry towards the world, my parents, my growing pains. The nostalgia of something I have never experienced remains.
Maybe this is the summer I can stay up past 10, or the summer I get my braces off, or the summer I have my first kiss—
The eagerness and hope of uncharted territory prevails. There is still so much to come, the eagerness is ripe within my belly and my limbs. Falling into summer is falling into the longing of possibility — it’s sweetness oozing from the peaches I pick in the orchard of my great uncles’ yard, as I wipe my mouth unapologetically; still unbothered by the way the world looks at me. Time stands still here, slow and syrupy, the hours spilling over like days.
I long for summer now just like I did at 12. The need to feel weightless, unbothered. Floating for hours in river by my house, the mud water coating my feet. Never concerned with pedicures or how the soft spots of my body formed around my bathing suit ties, my belly soft and rolled over my knees as I bend down to scoop up a frog from his hiding place.
With less rules and curfews and fewer pressures I exist in limitless possibility.
It is easier to exist in the summer, where the world turns green and soft. I learn how to skip rocks and yearn for my brother’s shrieks as I chase him higher and higher up the pine tree in the front yard. There is always moss beneath my feet.
Summer, as a child, is your resting place. It is where everyone pays attention to you less. and you welcome the thought of it. It is only natural to pine for this invisibility now.
You hear your dad tug open the sliding back door to make sure you’re still there, to call you inside for dinner, to tell you to wash your hands clean from all of the mud. there is no lack of energy, no boredom, only ruthlessness to the beat of your footsteps up the back stairs. They are lopsided and creaky, and older than most of your friends’ houses. No one notices.
Summer is an open window in your bedroom on the third floor, where the frog song floats in— never too loud to serenade you to sleep. the rooster next door is your alarm clock and there is no sense of dread, no to do list or life ambitions to prove. your little child heart does not yet know the difference of this weight. it only dreams of breakfast. for the sun to set a bit later. for your neighbor to come out and play again tomorrow. a certain kind of hunger that will soon be replaced by roles given to you by the world— a gnawing in your stomach you learn to swallow over and over again.
There’s a place that exists here where time stands still, watching the summers pass without notice— falling asleep sticky and sweaty on the couch at nine — to waking sleepily at 13, in the car of a boy who loves you. you wonder if all of life will continue to be this, hot and soft and tender. Summer is the fogged-up windshield from going too far but not knowing it yet, eager to prove you are worthy and interesting and someone to love.
Summertime meant escape, with crunching of the gravel as you sneak out down the long dark driveway, to meet the boy you’re sure you’ll marry. because nothing has felt like it since.
Tell the birch in the backyard I will come back eventually—longing for the protection of her branches from both the sun and the harsh realities of heartbreak—that to be shielded by her for a bit longer could have prevented all of it, the spiral downward you never saw coming.
I fall asleep on my belly and dream of my neighbor Rosa, I fall asleep and dream of crayons in the color robin egg blue, of picking dandelions in the field behind my babysitters house, how she collected them delicately from my fingers and placed them in a pink vase, filled with water, to nurture my sense of curious pride.
But morning light leaks in through the windows as I rub my eyes to feel Luna breathing deeply next to me, unbothered by the weight of growing older. She has never met this smaller version of me. I squeeze my eyes shut and envision her and I together in our younger bodies; hopping through the fields of gold and brown and green. Little me throws my arms around her neck as we sink deep into the moss, her head rising to lick the tears off of my cheek. I am never alone again.
As I wake, I remember I am no longer a teenager. Only because there is much more knowing in my body. Maybe not in the way I still awkwardly hold my body at a party without alcohol or fight tears during sex—
but in the way I show up for myself.
In the way I protect myself like the birch tree branches and say, “no thank you you will not treat me that way”—
in the way I long to be back in the mud…
with no curfew or expectations of keeping my hair brushed and clean.
To be nostalgic is to long for the voice of your dad calling you inside for dinner again, too lost in your own world-building to notice the disintegration of the real one around you.
The good old days were ruthless more than they were anything else, but my heart still pines for them just the same.
