I sometimes wake up in the summer feeling heavy. It’s inexplicable—this incapability of swallowing food properly or looking at anyone without wanting to cry or breathing, even, anything that involves the act of taking in—and fleeting, like I took a shower & it was gone, just like that! As if I had scrubbed it off clean, went down the drain along with hair strands and shampoo and dirt. 

On particularly lethargic days, I lay like a corpse on the leather couch in my parents’ room, the one situated by the window I keep a quarter of the way open so faint breeze is welcomed in, as are occasional barks (pleas?) by a neighborhood dog, laughter of children. What color does summer evoke, do you think? I conjure up a shade of red. I say this because I often begin reading a few pages of a book while laying on this couch, then awake to the color you get when you shut your eyes so hard you see specks of light (that is red, right? The color that surrounds the noise), and the book is resting atop my face. Or maybe white. There is a slight stickiness on my lower back, a parchedness in my throat, and I feel light; I drink some water.

In the summer, everything is distant: the cold (I miss having to moisturize my hands with apple mango lotion), people, routine. I think about how I could spend it laying on the couch and listening to the day pass via the birds in the morning, the children playing until night, ad nauseam, easily. And isn’t it weird, how possible that is? If I really wanted to, I could catch the sunlight in a languid state forever. But again, the feeling is fleeting. I have sudden bursts of energy & motivation, and perhaps, the fear of having accomplished nothing at all that drive me, so I continue.