This season is hazy and overripe. I’ve been working from home or more accurately, sweating from home, since I prefer the occasional sauna of my childhood bedroom to our wintery basement. My carry-on sits unpacked in the corner of my room where I placed it four months ago — a single sweater lolling out of its mouth as if it missed its chance to speak up, as if it’s expecting to be thrown roughly into the trunk of a car and taken back to the city at any moment. But we’ll both have to wait until next summer, at the earliest.
In the meantime, I open the windows and wait for the smoky blues of rain. I could sit in it for the rest of my life – I could believe anything with those cool honest hands on my face.
*
On dryer nights, fireflies glitter leisurely near the garden like ornaments. It turns out that although they can’t bite, sting, or carry diseases, their lights are poisonous. I’ve just turned 20, which means less than I expected, which means that I’m banished from the kingdom but I’m still on TikTok every day. Which means that people are dying every day and if I hadn’t been thrown out of the world, I wouldn’t have finally figured out who I want to be. It turns out that fireflies only have an adult lifespan of two months, despite spending a year growing as larvae. It turns out there have been doves nesting outside my window despite living here for almost half of my life, and I had never known until they were pointed out to me.
*
I have to say it’s impressive that the sun completes its rotations daily without fail, without ever falling gracelessly into another sky, or showering us in flames. I’m growing restless, on the other hand, even though I love my own company. The days have been at their brightest for weeks, but the nights grow darker. I bike across town and see my friends, the black-eyed geese in their elegant suits, the butterflies drifting like tiny fires near my wheels, and several storms of birds. If I was someone else, I’d know each of their species. But the wind, sweet and white as ice cream, can lull you into any comfort.
*
How fortunate I am — to have only small worries, buzzing around my ears as mindlessly as flies.