expired beginnings & alternate endings
the one where i tried to write only about heatwaves & the end of summer but accidentally wrote about fleeting intimacy too!
everything came to light
It’s August and the sun is trying to christen everything in its path. On a good day, opening the blinds to let all of that brewing light burst in can make even crumbs on the bed look holy. On a bad day, any speckle of sun that sneaks in through the gaps feels like blasphemy. It’s 6am and already the sun is spilling out from the spaces between the wooden slats on the window, like when you crack an egg too hard and the yolk breaks, making everything yellow.
I haven’t had a good night’s sleep all summer due to chronic insomnia - but I’m trying to practice gratitude these days, so I think about how being awake most of the night means I’ve had time to notice all the subtle ways light shifts with each hour, how the whisked light of dawn makes everything look like it's breathing; the steam from my cup of coffee swirling upwards and away as though it were letting out a long exhale.
Anything glazed over by the sun becomes magnified, making even the mundane seem important. Maybe that’s why we talk about summer romance more than any other kind: it is easier to romanticise memories of a warm body under dappled sunlight.
It’s 8pm and everything is the colour of memories: the satiny-rose-gold kind of light that makes the sky blush. Even though the garden is all soil and stacks of wood, my Mum and I eat dinner on the rusty chairs outside simply because it feels like we should, like the light would go to waste otherwise. I tell her that I’m planning on going to Canada for two months, but I don’t look at her when I say it.
summer as an upside-down hourglass
I’m scared that if I turn away for even a millisecond then I’ll already have missed the summer, helplessly looking back at the last glimpses of light, the sunburnt remnants of dusk peeling away. But it’s exactly this temporality which makes the season so charged with nostalgia; we get such a short time to relish in what we have waited all year for that summer becomes a symbol of the ideals it represents (freedom, desire, youth) more than anything else.
Summer is always running out, and as August draws to a close we are all but a few breaths away from being the last grains of sand in its hourglass.
Maybe that’s why we talk about summer romance more than any other kind: because it ends just as it starts to begin. You have to fall quickly or not at all. No time to hesitate at the shallow end. Do not think about which direction the current is going. It’s easier to romanticise memories of something you didn’t have enough time to understand - when it’s all just a haze of wet hair and dappled sunlight and sand in the shower and the distance between the stars and the shore and pretending to know more about the world than you do.
At midnight we go to the beach and are the only ones there, so we lie down on one of the empty sun loungers that usually cost €5 to rent during the daytime. The air is balmy and the moon far away. You trace shapeless thoughts across my arm with your fingers and we stay like that for a while, until you ask me what day my flight is again and I say: ‘Friday,’ when what I really wanted to say was: ‘If I could flatten this moment into a long gold thread and stitch it into the lining of my pockets then I would bury my hands deep in the folds whenever I want to feel the tenderness contained in that specific silence between two people who know that what isn’t said is sometimes more important than what is.’ We couldn’t see the waves at night but we knew they were there because we heard them crashing.
memory / fiction
It’s easier to make up myths about something you didn’t have more time to observe. Memories are malleable in ways that humans are not. Do you remember tomatoes on the balcony? I don’t know if my hair was up or down. I don’t recall getting sea-sick but something wasn’t right in my stomach. It doesn’t matter what colour the moon was anyway. You reached towards my hand from across the table, I know about that much. So much time has elapsed and now the pictures are starting to look fake.
brief instructions on alternate endings
(instructions for me as well as for you)
Recount all of the times in your life when you wanted a specific thing, a specific outcome, a specific ending. Now recount all of the times when that ending never materialised. Now recount all of the times you replayed Mitski’s ‘A Burning Hill’ while your head was buried between the knees curled up to your chest. Now recount all of the times you sat down in a field of grass and nothing was how you wanted it but everything was exactly how you knew it should be.
Say pressure and pleasure out loud. Notice how the consonants change the texture of the word. Notice the hard R of pRessure on your palate vs. the L of pLeasure, the light clicking with the front of your tongue. Pleasure sounds like it is drifting but with pressure there is a force. These days I’m not so sure that pressure and pleasure can co-exist at the same time.
Make space. For things to end. For that is the only way to create enough space for new things to begin.
THROW SOMETHING OUT like that top that you haven’t worn since your Ariana Grande phase or the shoes that are too high because think about your KNEES! THE OLD LADIES WERE RIGHT: cardigans are COOL and comfort is stylish. Let’s rise up against the tyranny of weekend chores. Eat a croissant in bed on a Sunday because otherwise what else is the POINT of a Sunday/of it all? SWEEP THE CRUMBS AWAY OR DON’T BECAUSE IT DOESN’T MAKE A DIFFERENCE AND THERE IS ALWAYS A STUBBORN ONE GRATING AGAINST YOUR SKIN AT NIGHT - A CRUMBLESS EXISTENCE IS A BORING ONE ANYWAY. Quit your job because healing is FULL TIME WORK. Go to the local park at 7am and wrap your bare arms around a tree. LAUGH BECAUSE OH HOW THE TIMES CHANGE, LOOK AT US NOW, LITERAL TREE HUGGERS! The bark of a tree is still softer than the hearts of some men.
/
I am still learning to let things unfold without believing that I have been robbed of what should’ve been: whether that be the job or the person or the apartment or even for the summer to stretch itself beyond its own dimensions so that I can have more time to make something of it. We cannot choose which endings we get, but we can choose to stop idealising any ending other than the one we are given. Summer comes and goes, the tide comes in and out, and all that we can control is what we decide to do with every change of season, with every new beginning (which will, someday, inevitably, end/begin/end/begin). This will all feel very bittersweet.
/
alternate ending 1 (the one where it’s sunny outside but i stay in bed and realise in retrospect that actually i had nothing to be upset about because most pleasurable things are fleeting not permanent and you’re a person and not a projection and nostalgia is mostly projections even if some of it was beautiful and real but anything could be beautiful because i chose to look at it that way)
It’s August and I wake up at 5am but can’t fall back asleep. I’m tired and don’t want the sun to pressure me into existing today, to have to live up to all the expectations that the sunshine imposes on a day. My eyelids are heavy as the birds start singing their dawn chorus. Today I will decide that it is not sinful to stay in bed, even if the summer makes it feel that way. Maybe when everyone leaves the house I’ll make a coffee, spread some jam on toast, leave my phone in a kitchen drawer, and retreat back under the covers. Maybe I’ll eat the toast in bed and go on Google Maps to walk around places in the US that don’t sound real: Sacramento, Albuquerque, Minneapolis.
Maybe I’ll just do nothing except close my eyes. I think that still counts for something. But when I close my eyes it is like I’m seeing an apricot coloured cloud. I look up and there it is again: that light between the wooden slats. You cannot shun the light in August - it always finds a way in.
Somewhere in the distance a plane takes off.
alternate ending 2 (the one where i’m outside and being outside feels good and not at all like i’m nostalgic for something else)
It’s August and it hasn’t rained in weeks. The grass is brittle but the air is soft. I’m walking back from Lidl and carrying a baguette under my arms because it makes me feel Véry Frénch. I wonder if the people walking past are thinking: ‘wow she is definitely so French,’ but then I notice my reflection in a shop window and realise that my fringe has gone all stringy and I am, in fact, not French at all, but actually just a sleep deprived British girl with a very oily forehead.
I have nothing planned for the rest of the day. Nearby, an empty bus waits at the traffic lights and a football is being passed between two young boys in an empty parking space. It feels like something bigger than this should be happening. Summer is nearly over; How do you mark the occasion for that? I put my hands in my pocket and find only loose change inside.
I lock eyes with an old woman walking in the opposite direction and give a pursed lip half-smile. She smiles back, all gums, and I realise I’m still smiling (a full one this time) even after she has walked by. Was the sky this blue before? Suddenly the day feels big enough just as it is.
Somewhere in the distance a plane lands.
the ending / beginning / ending / beginning / tbc
It’s August and everything feels big and sweet. The air is so ripe that I want to split it into segments and bite into it like it were a clementine. You didn’t need to say it was ending because what isn’t said is sometimes more important than what is. It will soon be September and the light will be different. It’s already changing. Endings and beginnings are the same thing, if you think about it. I pick up a seashell and it whispers to me in a language I don’t speak yet.
A plane flies overhead.
//
ahhhh if you got this bloody far thank you so much for reading!!!! i know this was quite a long one.. (sponsored by my subconscious apparently needing to process more than i realised!)
i’d really love to get in the habit of writing these sorts of things weekly/fortnightly as opposed to once per season like i s2g if my next post has autumn in the title i beg you PLEASE throw me off the eiffel tower LOL.
anyway i wanna know what was something you thought you really wanted at the time but you’re now really happy that things never transpired that way? an ending that you wanted but now is an alternate ending of sorts!!! do you think it was ACTUALLY for the better??? or are we maybe just telling ourselves that bc that’s what humans do to adapt and to retain control of our own narratives? IDK!!! my own brain drives me crazy and most of this was written on the back of 2 strong coffees and a worrying amount of sleep deprivation!!!
PS. BY THIS TIME NEXT WEEK I WILL BE 26 WHAT THE HELL!!! THAT’S JUST CRAZY INIT!!! MY POST-25 GIRLS WITH KNEES THAT WON’T QUIT (CLICKING) RISE UP
THANK U MERCI BEAUCOUP !!!!!
my first summer romance — I would’ve married him if he asked me,, but in reality dumping me was the kindest thing he ever did. thanks for this, gorgeous gorgeous work <3
I started a business in June and wanted to make all my July income from the business. It ended up a disaster bc I got very few clients and had to start a GoFundMe to help pay rent. Thankfully, my community came through, paid my rent and even offered grocery money. What I took away from the experience is that I’ll always be held; things will work out one way or another.
I learned to ask for help and receive love and support from others. I’ve never quite known how to receive before and I think the experience expanded my capacity for manifestation. This is obviously a great narrative my brain crafted afterwards, but I don’t think there’s a point in doubting whether things were for the better or worse. There are infinite ways my July could have turned out and I’m making peace with the way it did.
Thanks for the great post and I’m looking forward to your weekly reflections xoxo