My god, Summer is a thing of mystery.
She's fallen asleep on me, taken up the whole couch. It's alright, I took a caffeine pill, so it's not like I'll be sleeping for awhile anyway. My head is rambling, fragments trailing off in so many directions at once, like arms reaching out into blank space for something just beyond the colorlessness. Maybe it's a tiny, shining moment, lost in time. I haven't thought about it much lately, but now, I wonder, how come none of us can forget? How come we cling to that color, that blur of smiles and nameless feelings? So many nameless feelings, melting together into one, vague image of a thing we just can't get back to, we won't ever touch that, that, again. So much green. So much beauty. It amazes me how unclear it has become, and yet how important it remains.
This summer feels almost the same. The feelings are close. It's as if someone I have lost is breathing into my lungs, someone I can't possibly see. It's this ghost. Something, someone that vanishes as soon as you know it, or he, or she, is there. A mystery, a mystery, hiding in laughter and withering in picked flowers from my backyard. Perhaps we lost our lives in backyards, or in basements, or just in each other. I'll never really know.
Do you remember that night that I snuck out the back door, to sit outside under the clouds until the rain began to fall? I was out of my head. I was wearing the turquoise shirt, the one I wrote a poem on, and later ripped a hole in. I don't know where that shirt is now. I must have said so many ridiculous things, you probably don't even remember them. I collapsed later and you told me I asked you to go fishing. In my backyard.
What about that one perfect day, when we walked to your cousin's from school and jumped in her pool with all of our clothes on? I think all of us were there. We kept throwing things at each other. It started to rain, but it was the most beautiful thing, the sun was still shining down on us through the raindrops. I remember standing out in the road with those boys. Standing in the gutter as it filled up, feeling the warmest feeling. Feeling so full of everything that I could just burst.
And the next summer, they ripped the pool out.
My mom has reminded me, more than once, of how I used to beat her at games of Memory when I was only three years old. I played Memory a few years ago, I forget when and where and with who, but I know I lost. It's funny. I'm not sure how well I can remember now, or how well I remembered things then. Can we trust ourselves to remember anything purely for what it was? Can we remember anything, write or tell anything that relays a pure emotion, that getting-back-to, that one feeling that permeated our existence for a day, or a few hours, or even just a second? Can we recapture it, or is it gone?
If only there were bottles for these things. Bottles for sunshine, bottles for bonfires, bottles for the color green and for the smell of a basement full of kids in love. I would have a collection.
But I know we can all be new. Green doesn't get any less green, no matter how many times it reappears. The Sun doesn't die. My backyard might fall off of a cliff, but I'll have you all in my heart, and I'll never let you go, no matter how my memory degrades over time. You're as shiny as ever, do you know? I keep writing about you, over and over and over. I'll keep thinking of you, every summer that begins.
I love you. Every one of you. And I don't think, anymore, that it really matters why.
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