What’s wrong with me? I’ve been asking myself this all week.
Anyone who knows me will tell you that I weigh questions coldly and logically. Then it hit to me.. it’s summer, silly, and I'm in classes!

A typical summer would find me tanned, sunburned, greased and unkempt, like a happy, sandy, beach hobo, my hair would be either braided or left fly-about to tangle into cotton candy wads.

My bf Peter’s learned to like fine restaurants (You’re welcome). I’d have never left the beach on my own.
“They can bring us anything,” I’d argue, looking up pitiably from my shaded, Tropitone lounge chair.

Around sundown, Peter would have to catch me, slippery oiled and brown, to comb me out and scrub me before dinner.
“Get dressed!” he’d encourage, picking out a dress suitable for dining or casino wear - “I made us a reservation.”

I’d come out of the hotel en-suite in one of their fluffy, Versace, terry towels but invariably, before I was even dry,  Peter would shake his head, growl and say, “Com-mere,” holding his arms out a little, palms up
(he’s never been very verbose), and smirking a little, I would, because his expression reminded me of Christmas.
“What about our reservation?” I’d chuckle.

This was, of course, a volunteer situation, where it was up to us all to do our best.
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Songs for thus:
Girls On the Beach by Carter Cathcart
Wouldn't It Be Nice by Papa Doo Run Run
Please Let Me Wonder by Carter Cathcart

Charles and my predawn jog was a sweat-athon and as the sun rose, a heat-dome brightness tattooed crisp shadows in every corner. Any lingering coolness was burned off - evaporated.

It was 94°f, 3 hours later, when I walked to campus - why don’t we use  parasols anymore? Drag on, radiant afternoon heat, please.
That was 100 proof sarcasm, in case you couldn’t tell.

Hot days seem to drag-on slowly, like waiting for a microwave or a droning, liturgy. It wasn’t in the forecast but I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear, “Today’s forecast is slow, really slow.”

Let’s start an Internet theory that the atmosphere is thinning or we’re just ants under a magnifying glass.

The finally setting sun left a blood red line under the falling blue dark, like a **** of wound in the skin of young-night.

Once my nightly obligations are done (classes, homework, reading), the silence can seem oppressive. I’m used to the never ending hustle, boiling drama and noise of seven suitemates - so there’s that.

On now empty nights, I’m tortured by the high-beating pulse of youth, and I pace my empty apartment, like someone restlessly waiting for their venti-mocha-latte at a Starbucks.

Can anyone suffer like a young woman left all alone?
Why, oh whomever, must I sip from this deep, bitter, undrinkably salty sea of solitude?

In this, my prime season, why do I only manage to exist?
My needs are in a shameful state of decay.
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Cruel Summer by Bananarama
Habits (feat. Haley Reinhart) by Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox [E]
All That I Need by Ebony Loren, Matthew Ifield & Sebastian Kamae

half way to paradise
half way to hell

a right turn here
a left turn there

love is radical
a choice made.

What I write
might not be right
but I'll not be stopped:
free expression is my right

when such freedom
is stifled or suffocated
democracy will witness
an instant moral death