Summer

by jennymarierae

The humdrum of the city glistens through the rain. Up ahead the traffic lights turn, and I swim across the road. I swear it’s colder here.

Even in an epicentre, surrounded by zipping cars, people, and pampered pooches on leads, my fingers feel numb. The trickles of dew slide off and under my yellow umbrella in a parade of liquid, and my hair starts to stick to my face and my shoes squelch over the pavement.

I should throw it away.

I mean, any hint of a breeze and it’s inside out subjecting me to the elements; yet, for some reason it makes me feel safe. It blocks my view of the towering concrete palaces and their glowing neon windows.

The wind picks up and I trip over a concrete slab and my face is near the floor and I don’t know how I got there. It’s so cold. Strangers kick water at me as their feet spin by, like a bunch of bicycles all flooding in the same direction.

My umbrella is nowhere to be seen.

Yellow engulfed in a tidal wave of grey. And my hair sticks to my face even more. I pick myself up and shuffle against the wall of a building to stop and breathe.         To stop.           And to breathe.

I think back to one month ago when fresh air filled my lungs, in a place where I stepped outside and saw the green of grass and not just the luminous green man telling me how to navigate the shark-infested fish tank where no one stops to help me up from the floor and the rain causes streams of black to run from my eyes.

I can’t go back.

I watch the greys of women’s high heeled shoes as they sidle gracefully down the granite catwalk and I can’t help but think of when we met and I was wearing that yellow dress. It was raining then, too. But we were inside, encased within a throng of people. You entered the room and I noticed you. Later, we found ourselves outside, water descending from the blue-purple sky into our beers and soaking our cigarettes, but it was refreshing, and we spoke about the things we had in common like we’d known each other for years. I’d known you an hour.

My mobile phone rings. I answer to an old friend that I’m meant to be meeting. I’m late and I tell her about my graze with the ground but she doesn’t sound interested. “This is your hometown, how can you get lost?” she asks. And of course this is my home. The green man stares expectantly at me as I anxiously approach the next road, my shoes drowning in stagnant puddles.

I think the rain’s getting heavier.

We had such a fun summer. That day we lay in the green meadow and you tickled my face with the long amber grass and I giggled. And the man in the red jacket walking his dog saw us and looked sternly at The Youths Fooling Around. We were fools. I was foolish.

I hang up the phone and wipe the water from the screen. I can’t possibly meet her like this. I know what she’ll be wearing – grey high heels and a black ensemble as if she’s going for a business lunch or a funeral somewhere. My friend, the skyscraper.

A shop doorway beckons and I stand underneath the fluorescent lights with strangers who also wear their hair like a helmet, plastered to their temples from the city floods.  No one looks at each other. We all stare straight ahead, hypnotised by the bouncing rain and the black minicabs sheltering the passengers in navy outfits.

I remember when you sheltered me.

We climbed inside the forest and ran between the openings of the great green ceiling where droplets squeezed through and threatened to brush our jackets. Our laughs echoed through the vast lavender evening and your hand fit mine just perfectly.

Now, my hand hangs limp as goose bumps march across my skin and I shiver like I’m shaking your memory out of me.

And then something catches my eye.

On the other side of the road I see my yellow umbrella floating along the bleak current into the black distance. I guess summer can never last.