That Summer
written by: Angela Huskisson
As late sun seeps through dragonfly wings, it takes me along a myriad of instant techni- colour to that summer. The one we can never stop talking about, the one of endless hot days, the one which we hoped would never end; that summer of love with half a century already stretched and gone. And this was way before anyone talked of climate change. Yes, it was that summer. Remember?
‘When I’m dead I won’t be here,’ you’d said in your unmistakable laconic drawl, the one which drew me in like honey along an ice-cream spoon. Logical, I thought at the time. You meant here, and I mean now.
That was the summer when we imbibed so many mind-blowing substances, where the land and sky were one, and we listened to their distant beat. We even walked into the sunset together. But that was then.
That summer, we’d clung to each other, promising to never ever let go. You, with your wild hair, and me in my micro mini skirt; all legs and tan and attitude. But, in the end, you did let go, and I let you fall from my fingers. We were young, so young, where we think youth is short on memory and moves swiftly on to the next ‘big thing.’ But we were so in the moment with Elton, Kiki, and Dancing Queen, all breaking our hearts, and with all those crazy fillers in between.
I couldn’t do illness. And I certainly couldn’t do death, not when there was so much to live for, and even if it was you. So, in the end, I did nothing even though you were only a short bus ride away. I could have caught that bus, but I couldn’t, and I didn’t, and so I lost you to a greater force, way beyond my control.
You left peacefully, silently closing the door between us, locking me out; or maybe, I did the locking. You slipped into another summertime, another place of eternal youth, where the colours are bigger and brighter than any we can possibly conjure. And now I see you so very bright in the dragonfly wings as it stops and eyeballs me knowingly.
In the end, it would have been easier (for me) if you’d gone in the winter, in frost and boot high snow. I would have had an excuse not to be with you in those final final days, but the sun took you instead, and I’m no good at endings. Yet, when the evening light opens like this, after another abnormally blistering day in a usually cool land (heat dome effect apparently), I see you. I wonder who or what you would have been with your degree in Environmental Studies and who you might have become. I smile at the thought, and all is well, and I’m only concentrating on those first few letters of that end word, ‘Goodbye,’ as the dragonfly flashes away into blue, and I feel you move in my heart. Forgiven.
NOTE:
Based on the Prompt – The Golden Hour Confession
- That Summer - July 6, 2026
- The Loadstone - June 7, 2026
- Those Castles in The Air - May 3, 2026
