Summertime - The Thoughts Of A Thought Daughter
Staff Writer Eleanor Hughes ruminates on summer and its temporal properties, exploring nostalgia, fleeting moments of rest, and the changing of seasons.
Summer hangs heavy in my mind - soft, hot, tantalising days limp past, thick with humidity. Smatterings of rain puncture the heat, clinging to the days as each bleeds into the next. Thoughts linger curiously like the sheen of perspiration on my skin, incessantly recurring, uncomfortably loitering. How does this summer compare? To the last? To the next? Shuddering with possibility, summertime is energised by the promise of time. Boundless.
June strides confidently into
July softly padding in the shadow of
August crawling tenderly into
September.
What did this summer mean to me? Was it one of those summers? Memorable. Unforgettable. Haunting. Or was it a summer that quietly inched along with no real purpose? Did you allow yourself to waste time?
Rekindling with friends and flames and tending to new ones. Connections from university, from travels, from mutuals, people I have picked up throughout the year and placed inside my pocket. Summer decides if they become crumpled and discarded, or embroidered into the back pocket of my denim skirt. Girlhood. Sipping a crisp glass of rosé over ponderous conversations. Putting right to the world upon a patch of grass where we used to make daisy chains in our summer dresses.
Summer demands I pick up a paintbrush and apply acrylic to watercolour paper. My tennis racket has a broken string but I can still play. A Sunday afternoon bike ride is slow and tedious as a flat tyre drags against the pavement. It’s makeshift. It’s potential. It’s nostalgia.
Nostalgia’s heavy burden is laced into the smell of freshly cut grass, the cooing of wood pigeons, and the delicate rumble of a lawnmower. The sun prickles my skin pink and glitters in the tears squeezed from my eyes. A faultless balance of pain and joy. There is beauty in sensitivity.
Summer makes no room for introversion. The sun traps us in its spotlight, staging our hidden corners and creeping secrets. I am authentically raw. From my uneven tan lines and prickly legs to the words tumbling from my lips. Summer leaves no stone unturned.
Cruel is September, whisking you away before you can even say goodbye to August, the Sunday of summer. Autumn creeps up on me. The heady, dense, and steamy haze of summer finds relief in the downpours of September. My dark roots chase away the lightened ends of my hair just as the leaves bleed from green into deep red. Change is inevitable. Musings and rumination are replaced by clarity and distinction. This summer becomes tucked between the pages of a book I started but never finished. Fleeting, yet incomplete.
Edited by Roxy-Moon Dahal Hodson
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