My endless summer

In the middle of this oddly beachy October, I find myself without my usual markers of time. It is my first fall in over a decade without midterms, and without the biting weather that usually accompanies them, I am eased back into early summer. I am floating on the fickle raft of unstructured time: days that seem so similar to one another that I can deny that they have passed at all.

Living at home, I feel as though I have slipped back into childhood, but a distorted version of it—one where I join my parents for dinner as more of a guest. I’ve started hanging around people ten years older than me. I feel strange when they talk about real things like rent and their career. It feels a bit like when I just started to get boobs; I still dressed like a child but felt the uncomfortable chafe of marble nipples.

I am gathering the grains of sand that slip into the bottom half of the hourglass, carefully placing them on shelves beside little league trophies and dried-out corsages. There are moments in which I forget that I was once a person who explored foreign countries and spoke other languages. I have become attached to this past, more childish version of myself who resents meal times and is afraid of the dark.

I find myself standing aghast in front of new local restaurants or suddenly struck by how old my dog looks. Last week, I took a bath. I closed my eyes and tried to let the warm water bring me back to July but my knees buoyed above the surface.


Photo credit: Ivor Clarke - yellowproof.one