Waiting for Fall
Dear Summer,
I'm over you. I'm over shorts and tank tops and sandals and sweating. I'm over 90 degree days and sweltering in the sun. I'm done with the smell of hot, rotting sewage wafting up from the corner of Broad and Oxford. You were lovely in June, predictably hellish in July, and tedious by August. I loved you, nonetheless: your long days and lightning bugs and green leaves and bright mornings. But that was back home, in the cool lap of creek water, in the intentional pouring-sweat of hikes and ultimate frisbee and chasing eight-year-olds around the playground. I loved you in those quiet, early mornings with the mist rising off the mountains, the swoop and twitter of purple martins waking. I loved your heat in the spray of freezing hose water, in the bursting of water balloons and the slipping down of water slides. You were beautiful that first weekend in June, the early summer sun dipping cotton-candy below the bay. You were lovely as we drove in the dark down deserted roads, our voices catching over the soft rhythm of the radio. But now...in this city, in late September, I have tired of you.
I check the weather daily, counting down the days till 89 degrees no longer appears on the horizon. I fantasize about my giant L.L. Bean thrift store sweater, the one my brother says is too "Christmas-y". As I sweat my way to class, I recall those early mornings last year, with the stinging wind slapping against my face and chest and lungs. I dream of that indescribable quiet of fall, where the anger of late summer dies down and is replaced by a gentle hibernation, a preparation. I make coffee, or tea, or hot chocolate and image how much better it would taste under a blanket with rain humming against the window panes. I long for mountain autumn, so different that big-city-east-coast autumn, which is really only a week of 65 degree days and brown leaves before the rains and winds come and the leaves fall, changeless, to be trampled in the wake of thousands. I long for those mountain drives with the asphalt winding its way through burning woods and you in the passenger seat, singing along.
-SE Wagner
I'm over you. I'm over shorts and tank tops and sandals and sweating. I'm over 90 degree days and sweltering in the sun. I'm done with the smell of hot, rotting sewage wafting up from the corner of Broad and Oxford. You were lovely in June, predictably hellish in July, and tedious by August. I loved you, nonetheless: your long days and lightning bugs and green leaves and bright mornings. But that was back home, in the cool lap of creek water, in the intentional pouring-sweat of hikes and ultimate frisbee and chasing eight-year-olds around the playground. I loved you in those quiet, early mornings with the mist rising off the mountains, the swoop and twitter of purple martins waking. I loved your heat in the spray of freezing hose water, in the bursting of water balloons and the slipping down of water slides. You were beautiful that first weekend in June, the early summer sun dipping cotton-candy below the bay. You were lovely as we drove in the dark down deserted roads, our voices catching over the soft rhythm of the radio. But now...in this city, in late September, I have tired of you.
-SE Wagner
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