Pink glowing toes in the evening sun, casting through the white drapes that dance, their skirts brushing against the floor. Clean but still feeling the afternoon heat against my skin, sticky and craving more sweat. Leeched from the day, from the copious amount of water, drank with bubbles tinged orange, lemon, and peach. It’s the end of the summer and we’re supposed to be celebrating but instead we are stuck inside behind our computers, typing away at the blue screens to connect with people across the world. Borderless communications. The fingers tap, leaving prints across the keys, the middle letters of the keyboard fading into half-stuck versions of themselves. But she types this as a dance, staccato movements reflecting the brief interludes of Bach and Satie to Chopin. The heat is kept out. The forced air leaves us smelling through our mouthes and wondering if we have allergies or if it’s just the mountain of old stuff, the piles of papers from decades ago, the calendars from 2022, opened to June, thrown in a banker’s box. These are the relics we will be passing on to our nonexistent heirs and they will know that the house cleaner came every other Thursday and when we went out of town for the weekend to the cousin’s wedding in Mendocino. 

It won’t matter and it doesn’t matter, so long as we are here, breathing in deeply, trying to find our way to the ocean each day. To infuse a sense of joy in hours spent awake, drinking in sunshine through the persimmon tree dwarfed from over-pruning, listening to the dog pant while we find his hair decorating our own clothes, the ones we promised we were going to strip off at the pool we never ended up going to. The big ocean, salt filling our noses, cleaning out our systems. Cleaning out our minds. 

And I’m still sweating. Gathering in the light, twisting curls in my matted hair, the lochs I refuse to wash but won’t stop soaking in argan and rosemary oils. I am convinced that the scalp will finally get used to it and I will not look like a wetted down version of myself, though I know that’s actually a style now, the slicked back look, lost in the rain while wearing a blazer, sparkling diamonds tight around the olive skin. A thin neck. We have forgotten to let it go. To let it all drip and hang out. 

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that there wasn’t much for us to do today except watch the airplanes overhead and let the sun cross the sky. Or at least versions of ones on our laptops. There will be plenty left for tomorrow. There will be time to get to what little work we have done. For now, can’t we pretend that we are on vacation? Can’t we let the clothes pile up outside of our suitcases and spend more time out of our shirts and pants than in them? I thought I heard the train call. I thought I saw it against the sparkling backdrop of the ocean. Instead I think I have forgotten how to speak, allowing my dreams to take over. Allowing the words to spill out onto virtual pages and feel my skin heat up, cool down, and melt into the heat.