It’s hard to say how exactly you know it, but this is Summer’s dying moment.
It’s still very warm as you sit outside—you won’t be able to stay out long because of it, with the heat rising up to your face in an uncomfortable, never-ending wave—and you know it will be warmer for a good while yet. The leaves are still bright green against blue skies, and children scream and play in the nearby park, enjoying the sun’s late lingering, though not as late as it was before.
It’s something in the wind that serves as the harbinger for Summer’s death. It’s still warm, but it carries Autumn in it. With each gentle gust, you can feel the promise of the chill to come. It rustles the leaves that will soon redden, a ghostly reminder of what’s to come as it whistles past. It’s a wind full of warm drinks, bubbling soup pots, cozy scarves and jackets.
You like Fall. You like it quite a lot, actually, and you spend a great deal of every Summer counting down the days until cool weather and warm colors return. It’s safe to say that, most of the time, you’d be content in a world that skipped Summer altogether.
And yet…
It’s melancholy, watching Summer come to an end. You don’t have Summer vacation anymore—adulthood, tragically, sees no need for a break. But the liberation of the season still lingers in you. Seeing it come to an end is like seeing something strong and young and beautiful start to wither. There’s potential in all seasons, of course—for love, for change, for something different—but Summer, or at least the idea of Summer, seems ripe with it.
You should have swum more. You should have gone to the outdoor market. You should have gone to the park.
It doesn’t matter, of course, that the Summer was full of triple digit days that were miserable enough indoors, or that you don’t really like swimming all that much, or that the outdoor market in your area tends to be very underwhelming. What matters is that you didn’t do those things, and as you see Summer fading before you, it feels like a lost opportunity. And that is what you grieve.
The heat’s starting to get to you. You ought to head inside to cool off.
Leave Summer to greet its death, like it does every year. It will be back, like it always is. You tell yourself you’ll go to the outdoor market when it returns, even though you know you won’t. But you figure it gives Summer something to look forward to before it’s gone.