(3) Summer notes
Week seven of laying in the sun. Cold glass and cracked ice cubes. Blanket, laid down on always damp grass, and the same five pages of a book, again and again. Here, days smell like freshly mowed grass, and the evenings like the neighbour’s dreadful barbecue. Sometimes like broad beans on the stove, sometimes like raspberries in their paper cup. Dill and lavender. Eventually, like the long awaited rain in the heat.
.
After sunset, at the table outside. Talking about plans, decanter and five glasses. Now together again, now we have time again. And again, I promise I’ll visit you there, abroad, in your apartment you’ll rent from Autumn on. Let’s have one more, after all it’s still warm. Let’s take a walk, after all it will start getting bright by 3 a.m.
Wake up at 4 a.m. Blackbird’s song and fog behind the window. Piping hot coffee, zipped up suitcase, passport in side pocket. The taxi lazily moves towards the airport. The sun rises, so bright I can see it through my closed eyelids. We drive around the city, quiet and empty. For a moment I think that maybe I won’t miss it.
We go in, slowly, first up to the knees. I know that I won’t take a dip before you do. Only when I hear you laugh, swimming towards the horizon. I don’t want to be left behind. After all, we both know that I will easily get tired and will go sit in the sun, drying my hair. We only have one towel, which is full of sand anyways. That’s okay. Come lay down and listen. The waves, the seagulls, the neighbour’s portable radio. Partly because I’ll forget, partly on purpose, I won’t shake the sand out of my clothes before we return home.
Week seven of laying in the sun. I don’t really want to do it anymore, but I won’t stop. After all, in two months it will be what I dream about.
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Images by Julia Grochowalska @_jgrochowalska.