Summer wasn’t meant to be this way.
Summer was meant to be about feeling the sun on your face, lifting your chin to let it filter down your body, enveloping you in a cocoon of gold.
Instead the veins raise on my hands as I type, skin on my fingers scaly and old, more papier mache than anything else. Mum was right, I really should use hand cream more often.
I sip my tea, holding the mug with one hand slipped right through the handle, the other mirroring, back slightly hunched as if to draw the heat right through into my tense shoulders.
It doesn’t work.
The grey sky is a perfect reflection of my pallor, dark grey circles rim my eyes, a constant reminder of the need to retire before midnight occasionally. My pasty skin hangs flacid, daring me to exercise, silently laughing at the pitiful attempts I make to ‘stay in shape’. “Could do better” it says, echoing school reports of old.
I consider my day. Work to do, house to clean, maybe some time to write, and I allow the minutes to sweep past, wasting away. No time for this, no time for that.
Summer wasn’t meant to be this way…