Almost Summer

Summer was coming…

One could almost feel a glimpse of it in certain afternoons…when the air blew warm and enough green was in the trees to make it feel like it was almost there.

The summer when her hair would curl and she would shower and leave it wet…the tendrils darker than when dry…the scent of soap and scubbed skin still high on her.  He had enveloped her in these moments, crushed her against him, inhaled her and felt the skin upon skin.  When they slightly separated she had left a small wet skim of her against him.

The summer when the storms would darken and cool the air in a violence and then depart suddenly.  Her brief and wonderful interludes with him.

And as he drove home through rain and yellow lights it was washing it away…cold memories.  He wanted the heat of her, the warmth.  The clench.

The summer when a day began with her and an evening slowly ended with her.  There were more moments together…summer days were longer.  Summer days lingered.

In the fast and vast humidity he tasted the salt on the neck, the sugar in her kiss…he wiped away a bead of sweat and watched her chest rise and fall.

The summer was darkened rooms and cool white sheets, the color of snow, the brief reminder of winter until she lay next to him and it was summer again.

The summer when the grass was wet with morning humidity, and you left footprints on the sidewalk.  Her in just his shirt,  barely buttoned, the outline of her hard to detect but the legs were tanned and the color of darkened sand.  Her brief walk to the door.  The padding of her walk across the floor.  Summer was the barefoot walk of the barely clothed.

The summer was new moons, waning…adding light to each day. 

Her simple voice a color to him, adding layers to the light…scented drops in his ear.  Warm, honey soft and colored, barely stirring.  But there.

The summer was a collision of days and nights, with no calendar but rather a sensation of moments and times that blurred and weaved in and out of his memory like the blink and heights of fireflies, signaling and rising in an evening.  Summer was the capture in a mason jar.

The summer was the low warm river at an ebb, smooth warm sand beneath…light reflecting and kaleidoscoping and occasionally you would find a shell, a beautiful pale one that you would store and keep.  You would pull it out in winter, to fold in your hand and remember the water as you plucked it from the river bed and made a reminder out of it.

She was like that…that beautiful pale piece of summer that you tried to hold in your hand and when he looked at it now it was empty.