beginning like spring you defrosted and delicately painted sweet colours

swiftly turning to summer overflowing with light and warmth

quickly you turned to autumn, bringing a brisk chill of amber

warning

ending it your winter stripped bare your blistering cold freezing

and now I wait

patiently for next spring

humidity broke
a cooling pavement littered
with Cicada chaff

the days won’t slow
the nights won’t drag
they move too quickly
it’s all too fast

i’ve always hated august
her grip
on my arm
her drinks
in my bar
her laughs
so far
away
but i hear them
echoing off the walls
of the barn
in this particular
part
of the season.
it’s starting to
feel like treason.
i give so much love
lying in
summer’s arms
i hold her like
a three million
dollar diamond ring
and i give her everything.
she leaves me broken
and shattered
likewise the mad hatter
and i collect her
fragments like a good
little child.
a good little
disciplined child.
she discards the wild
in me,
although i
keep
her summer breeze
alive.

i’ve always hated august
the anticipation that
comes along with her
heated embrace
her clammy hands
on my face
she wants to be
a motherly figure
to take my mother’s
place, but she’s
just too forceful
not merciful
enough.
i want a refund
for all the
money i spent for
her
to keep loving
me,
but she lets me go
like i’m some
contagious cold
that only wants to
keep you close
so
it can give you
the most sniffles.

i’ve always hated august
her savage remarks
how she gets so dark
when i just want to
feel her presence
at eight o’clock.
she’s always busy
getting wasted,
her neglecting
so shameless,
she shoos me away
like a poor peasant
begging
at her feet.
the actions she
never apologizes
for,
she adores seeing
her
tanning children
suffer,
cry their brains open
since they have
no hope
and
no happiness.

i’ve always hated august
cause it always
seems
like she hates
me.
i wish we had
a better relationship
but she’s always made
my life a living
shipwreck,
again, i am beached.

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.

Rolling out from blue lotus
off the sky
nymphs in tangerine bright
all colours
tuck into disappearing
rainbow slides.
Ah, fragrance
of the broad daylight
a day in summery August
is still heady
weaving blue butterflies!

afternoon
        treading ****** into eve
trees peddling against the weather
slowing
        meddling with the soupy weight of the air
lending against the grief of the world
        host of rewarding nature
when time is taken
        to go simple and be permeated

Sophy’s mom sent her a giant case of “Fun dip” - a thousand packets of sour, fruit-flavored sugar. Is there anything more junkavore a parent can buy a child - well, ok, an 18 year old?

She LOVES them and so does Leong who’s from China where, apparently, you can’t get useless, non-nutritional snacks. The two of them are running around, all sugar hyped with their emo-grape-chemical-lips, sticking out phosphorescent-green-tongues and threatening to tickle everyone with cherry-red-fingers. It has me wondering, should I switch to dentistry?

Our college prep has moved to a new phase - with just 16 days until we move back into our residential college. We’re suddenly sleeping-in. It’s nothing we planned or even discussed, it just started happening. We go to sleep around 10pm and sleep until 10am - or later. I think we all subconsciously realized that soon we’ll be back to sleeplessness.

I’m peachy - in a great mindspace - these days. I’m well rested (see above), we’re killing our sophomore prep - even the physics, my period was a nothing, we spent over two hours in Ulta sampling perfumes, I have a new Macbook M2 (see below) and I painted my nails in tropical colors.

The FedEx man rolled up yesterday. “Anyone expecting something?” Anna asked the crowd of roommates attracted by the driver bringing packages to the door, two at a time. No one was expecting anything. Eventually he’d delivered 8, back to school, M2-Macbooks (2 in each color) - one for everyone - from my Grandmère.

If that sounds needlessly ostentatious, then you’re thinking she went to the mall and paid full price, but she probably just traded Tim Cook a half ton of lithium or something - one of her companies mines it - in Chili - I think. But still, my roommates were blagabloo.

I picked a starlight one. An odd thing about the new, flat Macbook Air design is that you can’t pick it up with one hand - unless you hook it underneath with a long fingernail - what are guys going to do?