This Desolate Summer

These stretched-out hours hang long and loose around the middle. Summer is a particularly desolate time to be alone, hands empty rather than holding his. I dream of lying in the grass next to him, together forming a layer in this cake of earth and grass and warm air, deciduous canopy and blue sky. Summer alone without anyone to casually brush with your fingers as move past him in a small room, flush with invading sunlight. A light touch, as if to say, oh, I'm just here behind you, don't step back or you'll trip and we'll find ourself falling to the floor, laughing and then I'll kiss your cheek, rough with the day's new growth, there sitting on the floor. Instead my fingers pop; cracking and shriveling I try to rehydrate them as I bite the white from my nails. The air is perfumed with blackberry and hot pitch sweating from the overdressed firs. The sun laps at my protruding bare arms. Inevitably, though, I find myself inside, hiding from summer and its inherent romance. I crave someone on whose shoulder I can lean as we sit in the living outdoor silence, books propped up on knees and steadied by the hands that are not occupied in embracing one another. I need someone who will kiss me in the long dusk as the air slowly cools. I want to roll down the windows and fuss with the radio as he drives us off on grand adventures. I earnestly hope I am not one of those Pauline people whom God has set aside for a lifetime of singleness, but I am afraid. I am afraid that this man will never find me, cloistered away here hiding from confronting my friendlessness.

I once began a story in the fairy-tale tradition, wherein a princess, having decided that there was none in the land worthy of her affections, locked herself in a tower away from the world. Eventually, however, she grew lonely and earnestly desired to be rescued from her self-imprisonment, and so staged her own kidnapping by oni (my childhood was rather culturally confused, European and Japanese stories shelved side-by-side in my mind). And of course she dressed as her own peasant handmaiden and guided the necessarily handsome knight to the oni's lair. Naturally over the course of their adventures, the two fight many obake, have some Taming of the Shrew moments wherin the Princess learns to generally get over herself, and ultimately fall in love. I don't know how I planned to finish the tale, but it never entered my mind to have it end other than happily, with a grand wedding celebrated throughout the land.

And so this summer, I once again find myself locked in a tower of my solitude so remote that even my exaggerated cries for help go largely unheard by any that would be qualified for the role of handsome knight. I have heard the advice countless times; get out there, hang out in places he's likely to haunt, make friends and don't worry about it so much. Apparently, though, I would rather sit alone in my room, wallowing in my solitude than go out and enjoy the sun this desolate summer.