Scars Of Summer

Summer was a thief. It gave you long days and warm nights, short dresses and cold drinks, and then it took them all away in September. It left you with memories that stung like salt in a cut and the harsh realization that the season of growing was over. Leo pulled his sleeve back down. The summer was gone, but the scars, like the cold wind, were there to stay.

These are the souvenirs of three months of reckless living. They are the map of a season spent outdoors, a time when the days stretched like taffy and the nights were humid and heavy. When the air turns crisp in October and the sleeves lengthen, we cover them up. But under the wool and cotton, the skin remembers the sting of saltwater and the scrape of sandy towels. They are not wounds anymore; they are the evidence that we were once wild. scars of summer

Look at your knees now, covered in the ghost of scrapes from asphalt that sizzled in the July sun. Trace the faint, jagged line on your shin from the bicycle pedal that spun too fast. There is the bruise on your shoulder from the recoil of a dive into water that was colder than the air, and the rough, peeling patch on your nose where the sun loved you a little too hard. Summer was a thief

But summer has a way of being both beautiful and brutal. The heat was oppressive, the sun beating down on us like a relentless drum. We'd spend hours lounging by the pool, trying to cool off, but even the water seemed to shimmer with an otherworldly heat. Leo pulled his sleeve back down

We met up a few months later, and it was like the years had melted away. We sat on a bench, watching the sunset, and I saw the same spark in her eyes that I remembered from that summer.

"Meeting you was like a sunburn," he whispered to the empty air.