No Love in Summer
The heat makes thinking harder. These past weeks have been thick and heavy, the kind that presses down until caring about feelings seems pointless. So I don’t. I look for people to share the weight with—nothing meant to last, just presence, someone else sweating through the same unbearable stretch.
For years, my relationships always start in autumn. Not because I want casual summer and serious winter—it’s simpler than that. By September I’ve usually found my way back to myself, after months of being lost in wanting. Summer breaks me down. Autumn builds me back up.
And when the leaves start turning and the air gets sharp, there’s always someone there. We walk through cooler nights and talk the way people do when the season finally allows it. I fall into it completely, knowing how it ends. Winter comes, spring follows, we separate. She goes back to her life.
I’ve stopped resisting the pattern. Summer is what it is—hot and temporary and empty of anything real. Some people can love when the days are long. I can’t. I need the cold to feel any kind of connection. So I take the summer as it comes: distraction, bodies, nights without promises. A smile, a kiss, sleep. That’s the entire bargain when you’re underwater like this.
What’s left when it’s over is strange. Memories, sure, but also this unshakeable certainty that it had to end when it did. There’s sadness in that, but relief too. I’ll spend the spring alone, shedding whatever summer made of me, waiting for the heat to break and the wanting to quiet. Then autumn comes, and I do it all again.