The Death of Summer

It’s dark and quiet Moonlight filters through ripped-cotton clouds, cicadas sing in morse code, and crickets play broken violins as the night fades into day and the day breaks through to night. It’s a never-ending cycle of burning and bursting and falling and fading, and the confusion of summer’s adventurers swirls up into dusk’s air like the smoke of a soaring bonfire. A blurring collage of nights fast-fading from your mind, A rebellious rendezvous of your best and your brightest and your oh-so-shiniest memories, a toxic evening spent alone and surrounded by acquaintances that you’ve never been acquainted with, a night spent drowning in the endless endings of a careless youth. Her funeral is black. The only splash of color sits delicately in the coffin of your memories, to be thought about once you’ve stopped fighting for every breath and taken a moment to smell the flowers at your feet instead of choking on the dirt. A service of tears and goodbyes and perpetual promises that will never vanish, but rather dull in the back of your mind as you slowly relinquish your ability to remember, to think back to simpler times. The next morning’s sunrise is a stranger. It is not the sun that kissed your face until you blushed, that sent condensation dripping down your skin as you roamed the length of her perfect beach. It isn’t a sun at all, but a cruel reminder of the days you were happy, a replacement in the sky as if nature couldn’t handle its perfect chaos a second longer. You’re wearing black for a long time, waiting for the day when you too might leave for a while and come back to find yourself deep in the throes of youth and bad decisions. But for now, you’ll stay in black.