i see things in high definition colour, but july is the only month that fluctuates— between florida orange and, later, burnt sienna; everything between the 1st to the 31st is dipped in a honey-glaze of three things: 1. warm, sticky air 2. the feeling of 6pm 3. bicycles riding through fields of fireflies.
naturally, i spend most of july in my bedroom— the heat gets to me, makes my allergies flare and i watch movies; old, 80s, movies (or—tiktok clips of the same movie, only broken up into thirty-six parts that i view from my bed with my naked legs spinning vertical circles through the air).
i always forget the feeling of august until it’s there again. july overshadows it with the final embers, so i only realise it's august on maybe the 5th or 6th. almost a full week into a month that my brain— which is never wrong about the way things feel— sees a deep, ocean blue.
i don't write home about august. i don't hurry it up through winter months, when i begin the countdown to hot, hazy days. if anything, i view august as the ending of something, of a summer i wished so hard for.
and every time, it blindsides me with love.
i love things more in august. i love the smell of summer- rain on the pavement. i love songs i listened to in january. i love waiting around for halloween. i love my bedroom, the pause of heat-sick sleep, the blue-sky mornings.
i write love letters to autumn in a time capsule. i text july and ask u up?, and wyd?, and come over?
and still, when summer ends, i will never want to get what i wish for.