It’s gotten to that point in the year when I can’t really remember what warmth feels like. Happens annually, kind of amazing how the human mind forgets (as with pain), and now it’s February and I’ve forgotten what it is to walk outdoors and the air doesn’t hurt your lungs, when taking a stroll is laughable, when running from your car to a building is your experience with nature.
Waking up this morning, way too early for a Saturday, but my body had enough I suppose. The sun is shining through my light gold curtains, my room is bathed in a soothing glow and I think I remembered summer for a moment. Enough to pick up my pencil and write about it, anyway. Eyes still deep in sleep, my fingers decided to wake up and put thought on paper, perhaps as a message to me to grasp on to that memory of warmth and stick with it.
I remember being so warm that it felt as though I was aflame from the inside, and when night approached we all swarmed outside (like the gnats in the day?) to enjoy the respite from the heat. This annual forgetfulness almost blocked out the bright colors as we tried to out-sunlight one another, how bees got stuck in my long (auburn) hair, and how one afternoon we sat so long in the sun that I almost passed out.
We tried to walk to the beach in the latest blizzard. We didn’t make it. I wonder how sand feels? I do recall that it gets everywhere, that you feel it along your wood floors for weeks, how we crave being golden brown but are frightened to be.
I may drape those golden curtains over my eyes until spring, or maybe I will leave them on until the summer sun pours through, scorches them and burns my eyes, ensuring that I see summer year round.
Or maybe I’ll go back to sleep.
Write Then & There 