The June beetle chatters as flies hum and warblers sing and water ripples. Fish flap and trees tremble tickling each other's leaves and the dock creeks with subtle warming winds. I’m not out of breath as I sit with it all because I am endured and softened at the shoulders and do not clench the way I used to. I feel entitled to perch overlooking the water between swimming and running back to avoid being eaten. I’m not quite satisfied with it all, but it is quiet. I feel part of it, every blue and green. There's some potential in the space where I am also blinded by the lakes glistening— some. bright. clarity.Â
A crackling behind me signifies the entrance of a painted turtle for the waterscape through the squeaky grass on shore. She flutters beneath the surface to the deep end. Stroke by stroke making way after laying her eggs. She is in resting. She is after dying. I drip onto the dock watching her and swatting flies away. Â
Dragon flies smack into me in an incessant yet accidental way but they sit so beautifully beside me and inspire strange sketches in a book I keep by my bedside. I sketch more these days, between big blows of productive sweeps at your painting. There’s nowhere to escape the buzzing mess of things.
It is the Solstice, Midsommer, Litha—the longest days of the year. And if you were here, you’d be seeping into the whistle and liveliness of it all with me. I could drip my excess against your leaning, and you could hold it in your hands. The sweat glows from my chest, and I sparkle in an evening lowlight. For now, I’ll give this weight some time and light a candle in the name of summer because the days are long so why not brighten them, too. Maybe that spark could be an homage to the fires people and fairies once danced to on the longest days of the year.1
Are there fairies where you are?
I go home and I lay idly around sucking on the stones of wet peaches and sweating over the book you told me to read. As each day yields to the dark until Yuletide, I let the light leave me too.2 I let irises wilt in my windowsill, and I pledge to take the longest and coolest showers I can. I lather butter on my body and mist fluids on my face. I lay on the cold kitchen floor and pick basil and lavender for my mother and use her best flakey salt on every treat I indulge. The basil, into a pesto, and the lavender, to hang in the window. And I resort to a few old habits, remember where my brightness comes from, and pray it can guide me through how this season may change me with it.Â
I see You in the water here and there. You when the buzzing floods my ears. You, over seasonal fruits and hanging flowers to dry—I’d give you what's in season.
Do the fairies come out in the short hours of darkness there?
Midsummer leads me to face a reckoning. As I swim far out into the still waters or as my mother bakes a rhubarb pie, I pray. I give thanks for the longest days that allowed me to hold my loved ones tightly and transparently in the light. I remember there is dark, like an epitaph for the light.
—e.k
Ibid.