LETTER TO THE END OF SUMMER

 

©tedorè

Dear Summer, 

You have always arrived like an untamed guest, barefoot, salt still clinging to your skin, eyes glittering with the kind of laughter that makes everything around you seem more alive than it really is. You never knock. You simply burst in, fling your arms wide, and suddenly the days are longer, louder, more excessive. 

For a while, I believe you might stay forever. But you never do. And now I see you slipping away, dissolving into the horizon the way a candle melts into its own wax. Your body leans against the sea, and your departure is almost indecent in its beauty. A last flare of orange, a wound of red sinking into the water, a hush that feels like both a goodbye and a dare. 

You have been too much, Summer, and also never enough. You drenched my skin in warmth, yes, but left me thirsty for more than the body can hold. You spoiled me with sunsets so swollen with gold they felt almost arrogant in their perfection, as though beauty had forgotten its duty to be merciful. And yet, you also reminded me that even the longest day dies quietly, that light, however fierce, must bend into dusk. 

I will miss your vulgar generosity. The way you turned even the laziest afternoons into a theatre of light. The way silence itself grew heavy, shimmering, almost sweating under your watch. I will miss the sea that you made softer, more forgiving, its salt tasting less of exile and more of belonging. I will miss how easily you convinced strangers to undress, to bare not only their shoulders and thighs but their hesitations too, leaving them scattered like sandals on a beach. 

And yet, even in my devotion, I know your cruelty. You burn as much as you bless. You remind us of time’s greed: how quickly it consumes what feels infinite. You force me to admit that joy, when stretched too far, can become its own kind of ache. 

So go, then. Retreat into memory, take with you the sailboats anchored against your light, the paddleboards drifting like prayers across the water, the evenings where people sat with their faces lit in gold as if auditioning for eternity. Leave me only the ghost of your heat pressed against my skin, a reminder that I was once alive in your arms. 

I will wait for you, Summer, as I always do, not with the restless impatience of youth but with the quiet recognition that your absence is part of your gift. That longing is another form of presence, a continuation of touch. 

Until you return, I will sit with your absence the way one sits before an empty chair: still warm, still holding the shape of you. 

Yours, in gratitude and in hunger,

t.