Summer

  Summer


In the dead of night, it was cold: a deep heavy cold which begins at the base of your spine then creeps along. There are no spring flowers-they have passed their season. Once again, change is upon me as I sit and contemplate. This  is how I could know for certain  the most unspeakable of events would soon be mournfully crawling over the horizon.

The season of warmth had finally shown its ugly face to us all, like those many times before, but this time it would be different. I'm still not entirely sure how this time was to deviate from the rest. There were the usual routines of the worn down government employees and the hectic lives of fed up housewives dealing with undeserving children. The spite filled letter carriers would drag their decomposing selves from house to house in desperation, yearning to fullfill their latest obligations. They'd move on to the local dive to drink themselves to death, as usual. Children played in the streets, the burning heat of the mid day's sun gradually intensified. The days steadily passed the world by, all was as it should be.

But still I had to wonder, why were the afternoons so difficult to pass by with mindless entertainment that had filled me with such joy in years prior ? This wretched season  lasted an eternity. Although I had my job to partially occupy my time, it still wasn't enough to distract me from the meaningless passtimes of my peers. Fate had forced me to lay restless on my back and let out sighs of longing and regret during the endless nights of heat. Heat meant only to be endured by the insects and arachnids.

In the hours after work I would walk for miles upon miles in a  futile attempt to make these old lost days slip by at a hurried rate, but it never seemed to work. The company picnics and long walks in the park, the delightfull shrills of a long lost lover's voice beneath the shade of a tamarack-it was far too much for me to bare. I am no longer the youthfull soul I once was, my best years have come and gone-this realization came to me finally this time around. Perhaps I had known for years, perhaps only moments, whichever the case only now am I able to confess this-to myself at the very least.

The weeks pass me by, quicker this time, like they always do and I think about the soul less words my mother had once said aloud- though I don't fully recall them all the impression they made is in no way diminished. I remember sights of pure agony I had witnessed from the back seat of our car as a child, small prairie towns that begged my forgiveness for crimes unknown to the masses . The last sight I saw before I drifted off to sleep was the night's sky, void of the moon or any slight hint of remorse for it's unforgivable actions, and at moments like this I found that all was at peace and well in the universe. Soon the seasons would change and give way to the bitter cold of winter and I would again long for a simpler time and place, but it would never be-because we all knew, young and old alike, that summer could never last forever.