ocean-blue autumn

i see things in high definition colour, but

july is the only month that fluctuates—

between florida orange and, later, burnt sienna;

everything between the 1st to the 31st

is dipped in a honey-glaze of three things:

1. warm, sticky air

2. the feeling of 6pm

3. bicycles riding through fields of fireflies.

naturally, i spend most of july in my bedroom—

the heat gets to me, makes my allergies flare

and i watch movies; old, 80s, movies (or—tiktok clips

of the same movie, only broken up into thirty-six parts

that i view from my bed with my naked legs spinning vertical circles through the air).

i always forget the feeling of august

until it’s there again. july

overshadows it with the final embers, so i only realise

it's august on maybe the 5th or 6th. almost

a full week into a month that my brain—

which is never wrong about the way things feel—

sees a deep, ocean blue.

i don't write home about august. i don't hurry it up

through winter months, when i begin the countdown

to hot, hazy days. if anything, i view august

as the ending of something, of a summer i wished so hard for.

and every time, it blindsides me with love.

i love things more in august. i love the smell of summer-

rain on the pavement. i love songs i listened to in january.

i love waiting around for halloween. i love my bedroom,

the pause of heat-sick sleep, the blue-sky mornings.

i write love letters to autumn in a time capsule. i text july and ask u up?, and wyd?, and come over?

and still, when summer ends, i will never want to get what i wish for.

August 2022