The End of Summer

Rain...that was the first sign.

He sat in the car outside of where she worked...it was a bit of an invasion to occupy this space...to intrude her here...but he felt it was worth it since she had preoccupied a space in his mind for the last year...a sacred and secret place where only she could dwell...

Summer had melted away from them...a humidity that stifled.  It made them sluggish and distant...the slow slog of a summer calendar dissolved between them and a day became a week and then months...and in-betweens were like heat-lightning...brief and chaotic....brilliant but then done.

And then the damn rain...and its memories that filled him like a downpour onto an old house with poor gutter structure...leaking and spilling over and cascading in a deluge that is over-whelming...their first meeting in a storm and the protective cocoon of each other...first touches and glances and new skin and flesh...tastes.

No amount of rain could diminish that first full taste of her.

Her mouth in a storm.

But now, here towards the end of summer...it had been some time.  Passages. 

And he could remember everything about her if he tried....

Enough to fill a decade of summers...

But for now he'd just take an hour of her time if she relented...if she allowed...

Just to stand near...

Just to be near...

like the rivulets of rain streaming across his car window...never sticking...just sliding down in their gravity-pull...the way she slid across his memory...pooling at the bottom...

Signaling the end of summer like a sudden wake up to a cold and frost-bitten morning in Fall...the sudden removal of warmth...the fading of suntans...

Her absence was winter.