Sunscreen feels like melting wax slathered across my skin and smells like the 4th of July.
I avoid touching any pristine piece of furniture despite my inclination to plop down on the dark gray couch. Instead, I turn outside, where it doesn’t matter if I’m covered in summer.
Everything is bright, and I wonder how my blank algebra homework can seem to project an incandescent glow back at me. I lie in dangerous territory; it’s been predetermined that, tonight, before bed, I will look in the mirror to see red skin.
There isn’t much happening now.
A bug I don’t know the name of makes a sort of clicking sound; I hear some type of bird chirping. I think it’s coming from the roof, but I’m probably listening to 15 different birds; since I don’t know the difference, it all sounds like one to me.
Their foreign trills are heard as real-life accompaniments to the sounds streaming from my tin-sounding phone speaker. It’s a lazy day, and the mellow music that I’ve selected just makes me more tired.
I haven’t been to California in six years, but Ocean Blvd sounds like it could be in the Midwest, in a way.
If I look up, all I can really see is green. Green on the ground, green in the brush; green is the last thing you see before looking into el cielo. Even though I used to tell everyone green was my favorite color (maybe only four years ago? Around then, I think.), its abundance in the warmest months never appealed to me. It was always there, and for that reason, I believe, I didn’t care for it much.
I see though, now, that I shouldn’t have disregarded the beauty of a Michigan summer. Or spring right now, I guess.
I forget that there are people who live in big cities and tundras and Tokyo and Greenland who have never seen the green of a Michigan summer. So, I guess I’m lucky to know these rich shades that coat my world.
If I were ten, I’d probably be out biking and yelling and running, but because I’m 16 and biked yesterday, I sit on my deck instead. I think everyone around me feels the same draw of a sweltering day in solitude because I’ve seen only one person besides myself.
Just an older man—who I have had an unchanging perception of since age six—who gardens and weeds in the yard next to me. I am conscious of the volume of the music I play because, even though I’m sure he doesn’t have the hearing to hear it, I wouldn’t want its broadcast to disrupt the serene Saturday sounds.
I’m not sure where the little kids are.
I think of them as a past reflection of me even though they are two boys and two girls and I was only one girl. Their calls and various vehicle noises usually echo across these boxy, stretched-out houses and bounce into my room on most sunny days. I haven’t heard them yet today, so maybe they decided today was the right time to stay inside.
The sun makes me feel like I’m melting, and my mouth tastes like SPF 50, and I go inside.
