Summertime Clothes

Nights are lighter in the summer --

The land’s heavy heat goes to sleep with the sun like a reluctant, yawning child being carried off to bed.

The world turns a thousand subtle shades of the color blue. And you wonder if mirrors really do reflect only green light differently.

Dusk settles snuggly into the gaps between things. Warmth that was nestled into nature’s little hiding places lingers for just a little before dissipating thinner and thinner until eventually becoming night itself.

You never had to wait as the night did to become complete. Lingering at the top of the stairs waiting for a nod, a head tilt, or the small shift of making room before slipping so easily under the sheet that serves as a summer blanket. I never could fall asleep completely without cover.

The room is so still, it could almost be a painting in the background. Cool, old bedding drinks sun from flushed faces as thin fingers drink from between legs.

Grass crunches under feet like ice trying to be. Adventures and trysts splinter the hush in our yard, the neighbor’s garden, the wood next to the river.

Chirps from the bed are melted into the night to dance with the crack of wood and the song of cicadas and frogs. And all at once there are crickets in this frail ecosystem, the facade of these nights.

And, looking up, we know that every star in that bright night sky was placed there for every time that we convinced ourselves, more and more each time, that we were in love.

Slowly, as if dawn were unheard of, the haze softens to make way to a dull pink. and then to the color of the orange sherbert ice cream that you spilled onto your good dress (like your mom warned you would). And our trail, just our little reveries, slowly fades with the stars and I know and you know that our secret world is coming to an end.

Sheets, once so cold, emit warmth across the cooled sweat on backs and to legs that had to be reminded that they were chilled. Sleep in firstlight in thin shirts like crumpled paper. We will invert time, we will sleep against the clock in this small bit that is already becoming nostalgia.