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swdyw · Jun 6, 2026

summer

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Naila · swdyw

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The heat makes me feel listless,
it feels sinful to be still when the sun is out
Heavy heat is a phantom of missing
In Volos, we would wake up and walk outside. The water was right in front of us and we would go swimming immediately
Right after, we would sit by the water and eat fruit for breakfast.
The appetite you build after swimming is the purest kind, you feel like air after you eat —
It’s the kind of hunger you feel in every fiber of muscle, but it’s not desperate
I remember swimming every summer at the pool as a kid and working up the same appetite.
Maybe I am nostalgic for summer lunches
Nostalgia is a trap of sorts,
It’s mostly an innocuous and fleeting sensation if you don’t live inside of it and try to recapture and simulate the feeling with either the same or newer stimuli.
I suppose we are all trying to re-find comfort, which is impossible, once we are expelled from the womb and we are fleshy and exposed
These attempts to cling to hazy chimera —like trying to see through a screened porch door
A Granulized, micro-view through mesh —an always almost-there?
Every year, I wait for it to get hot.
I prefer the heat but once I’m in it I find it oppressive and uncomfortable.
That’s how it goes
Once in Athens, E and I trekked to get Indian food. We were so hungry but the heat sapped our appetite and once we sat down to eat we could barely have a few bites each.
We were sweaty and drained, staring at the huge entrees we ordered
And this was a theme during my time there, we somehow didn’t learn our lesson each time we had a meal.
I remember the sun beating down in the courtyard, most of the city was deserted since it was the hottest time of the day, when shops close and people go indoors to wait the heat out
It made me miss something literally indefinable. Maybe something that never existed.
ghost summer, time is warped and extended
The winter doesn’t depress me in the way summer does —
Everything shows us it’s alive, we sit outside and talk, drink, eat
The night is still warm, sometimes hot enough to swim with the moon out
But there is also this pervasive feeling that everything is going to die. That there’s only so much to do before leisure in the heat feels crushingly useless and repetitive
Naps in the sun:
Blood orange behind your eyelids, covered in light linen so the bugs don’t bother you
Waking up with that kind of heavy fatigue you can’t shake, where your hair sticks to your face and leaves sharp imprints of strands in your flesh
S says I have saint eyes.
you know, those large eyes in Orthodox icons of saints
I see but I don’t know and I don’t know what I miss anymore 

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