02/25/2020
Why is it that when I feel the sun on my skin there’s a sinking feeling in my stomach. Maybe because the last time I can vividly recall lying on soft sand, listening to waves crashing in the heat of summer was with my head on your bare chest. I cried right there, my tears landing and mixing with the salt on your skin. Ocean water and my fears for the upcoming months evaporating together. We had such few beautiful days, a handful of warm spring and summer nights. And now I can’t hear this song without feeling your gaze on me from the passenger seat, hand on my thigh driving back from the mountains. I’m scared to go back in the mountains, as much as I want to. They feel like they belong to you. I belonged to you there, briefly, somewhere off the trail, quieting laughter and swallowing the sounds with mouths that never said what they wanted to say. We filled an empty apartment with a sort of frantic desperate energy to stop time and make the night last forever. I cried and cried when it was time to say goodbye. I think I knew even then that it was a goodbye, not a see you later. Somehow, deep in my mind I knew that would be the last time you smiled widely at me, that smile I loved so much. All the memories, so vivid and bright, soon to be washed off like finger paint on a bare back. Something whispered it to me, between the moments of silence and cyclical conversations. Where promises lacked, an uneasiness that told me everything I didn’t want to hear. I knew and I know now. And yet when I feel my whole body enveloped in the warmth of a sunny day, when the air in the morning starts to smell like springtime and my soul itches to dive into the sea and the hours feel longer, when the green and the breeze seems to call out that everything in the world is as it should be, I only feel your warm touch. And I shrink back from it all.
I want my summer back
Everyday Escapes 