A personal free-write essay on the ephemeral, warmer months of Köppen’s oceanic summer by poet Mnna Mohammed.

How peculiar is it how summer comes and goes, yet always leaves us wanting more?

I seem to never really understand my love for Summer. I like the dark gloominess of winter and how the night comes much quicker, but now I love Summer: maybe it’s the memories I made or the memories we make in a time span that is so little yet feels like years. Summer’s kiss on the skin almost feels real, more real than human touch, and when we least expect it, most of Summer goes. I feel like I want to write about Summer but the more I think about it, what is there to say?

Do I give hate to the other seasons just because they don’t carry my memories the same? no! Spring is one of my favourites: the birth of all things anew still takes me by surprise; it’s a metaphor I often use when I write (spring). I also don’t like writing too much, that’s a key to the mind.

But in Summer, I swim and I’m warm, refreshed after drinking lemonade. Oh, how I love lemons... Anyway, back to Summer. I do more in Summer, yet yearn for the sunset it’s different in. It's more sensual; it welcomes the night differently than the others. I feel like Summer loves the night but is also envious of him. For the night is when the mind opens on a more spiritual level - well for me, that is. The night has my soul, while the day has my heart. Sometimes I think if the seasons didn’t have names what would humans call them.

If Summer wasn’t summer what would it be? “The hot time”? Yeah, I don’t know. But I miss Summer. I miss how it made me feel and yes, we were in lockdown, but this Summer was different. It felt different: the memories I made in the four walls of my room were much more than the ones outside. But the memories were different too: it was the Summer of a pandemic that made it seem like I had to think all the thoughts as to why this is happening, and how this Summer I thought the world was ending. But each time I think about it, Summer has always been a time where memories were created whether they be sad or happy, Summer does that and when the old Summer dies and the new one comes, the memories of that Summer leave with it and simply just become:

-memories-