Letters to Summertime

Dear Summertime,
You are hanging upside-down from the tree in my front yard. You are running through fields as wild as the flowers that grow there. You are bliss and the days that I swear might never end. And you are the fairy lights, stars and trampoline naps. You are the easy laughter curled up on the couch that faces the bike path. 

Dear Summertime, 
You are breaking my heart.
Someone once asked me what home was in a word. And I told them your name. It's not a coincidence the sound of your name plays in my ears like my favorite part of that Walk the Moon song. You are home. But the truth is, you are so much more than that.

Dear Summertime,
When I saw you this July, it was like I was so whole I might burst. It had been so long since I'd felt that full. It's not like I feel empty here. I really don't. But when I caught your eye across the bustling beach-side circle, there were parts of me filling up that I didn't know were hollow until they weren't anymore. There were bits of my bloodstream that began to flow again before I even knew they had stopped. Those two days were the happiest I had been in a very long time. You were the happiest I'd been in a very long time.

Dear Summertime, 
I am bloodshot eyes under too bright lights. I am too sad to eat anything. I am the emptiness that comes with having nothing left to say and feeling cold as winter. 

Dear Summertime. 
I am afraid to fall asleep in case you might call. I tell them I will get some sleep. They tell me I need it, after all, but darling, I wouldn't want to miss your call. I jump every time the phone goes off, the cheery text tone sending me grabbing my phone in a feverish haze, only to see it's not you and put it down again. For an hour or so yesterday, I muted all of the rest of my conversations so I wouldn't have to feel my stomach drop every time I saw a name that wasn't yours. But there were notifications - no cheery text tones - and after a while, the silence seemed like it might suffocate me. So I turned the notifications back on to see in the noise might fill the emptiness.

Dear Summertime,
When I think about you in that place, I feel cold as winter. I had never liked hospitals. They're too clean- too perfect- for the ugly things those walls see. Besides, those floors are cold as winter. And I know you're finding help there, but it makes me feel sick to think of someone as warm as you in a place cold as that.

Dear Summertime,
I know I can't make you stay, but if you go, the world will be cold as winter.

Tags: sad, metaphor, deep, fear, wishful,