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The Golden Summer

An equation, really. How does one make their summer truly beautiful?

By MargaretPublished 2 years ago 3 min read
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We are all in search of something, perhaps it’s everything, perhaps it’s only one thing; to fall in love, to conquer the world. I’d say I’m an everything sort of person. However, the one thing that shows up in my heart year after year and night after night is the golden summer. To feel warmth just from the memories of you, and me, and everybody. I realized though that it never comes in one full, every single second is melancholy and perfect, sort of summer, but rather in moments. There’s the walk to the cabin, along the lake shore. There’s laying on the back of my car watching the pine trees while all that surrounds us is music. Every Sunday morning, an hour of peace by the lake. Dancing in the rain, card games, naps in the sunshine, guitars played all day long, childlike smiles, two a.m. conversations. The way you stole my hand, your head on my shoulder. Kitchens at five a.m., bleary eyed and tired, and making the worst sorts of jokes. Crying for the feeling of it, crying because you don’t think they like you, crying because you don’t feel like enough, crying because you feel loved, crying because you’re laughing too hard. Stargazing on a roof, dancing in the dining hall, waffles for breakfast. Rowboats and riddles, costumes and carols, songs and shouting, bruises and blushing.

Oh, I am yours.

Oh, I am so homesick. Homesick for freckles, and the sun, and my mom, and for green, and for you. For the past to be the future, for the future to be now, for everything to be new, I am so homesick for you. For my golden summer.

Then tomorrow comes.

Plunging through the surface tension on top of the lake is a shock to the system. The water stings the souls of my feet and pushes into my nose so hard that I taste blood. My knees bend as I hit the bottom, scraped by the pebbles. I have to drag myself out alone. No one else watches my stringy hair cling to my face. The heavy breaths I drag into my lungs as I drag myself to shore. Every memory that was golden is now bitter. Copper at best, just like the taste on my tongue from the blood in my nose.

These other moments pollute the water I kneel in. You held my hand, then told me you couldn’t see me. You were the one whose head found my shoulder, and you’re the one to tell me it wasn’t anything. And everyone talks to me like I’m a child. I am. It still cuts deeper than the rocks at the bottom of this lake. And I tried. Trust me, there isn’t a limb on my body that isn’t bruised from trying. When we tipped the canoe in the river. When I drove us off the road. When I carried you out of the lake. When you slept in my arms. No, not even my soul escaped the bruising. The tarnishing. I was the one they made the leader and then left there. Tucked into the lake bed. Water rushing out of my eyes and into my lungs. Tell me that you’re tarnished too. That you remember jumping off the boat and tasting freedom only to long for safety. As is the nature of our mortal bodies. To want what we can’t have and when we get it to realize why we shouldn’t have had it to begin with. Chasing it year after year, day after day, breath after breath.

Oh darling, how I miss me.

How I miss myself.

The mother who created me. The village that gathered. How I miss breathing without having to cough up a lake first. How the air tastes after it rains and washes all of this away. Not knowing what Lake Superior feels like in the middle of June. Every. Single. Moment. And how wrong was I? So in love with the moments that I drowned in them.

Short Story
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About the Creator

Margaret

To write and be written

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