Jessie Spangler

Summer, as it always does, has slipped by too quickly. At the same time, these heat-swollen days feel long and endless. As I walk to work, or the train, I both curse and relish the stickiness of the air, the sweat that drips down my back. There’s a stillness to these late July and August days, like maybe it’ll be summer forever. When night falls, there’s a tinge of sadness in the velvet dusk, a reminder that time is moving forward after all.

Chicago in the summertime is beautiful, with the buildings gleaming in the sun and the light sparkling off the lake. The city is alive. Every restaurant patio is crowded with people each evening as heat radiates off the sidewalks, and the riverwalk is packed once again. The cruel cold of winter is a distant memory, but still, it lingers over everything and creates a sort of urgency, I think, in Chicagoans. Every drop of sunshine must be relished, dissolving on the tongue like fizzy citrus candy.

There’s this anxious feeling in the summertime, mostly because there’s only so much time to be outside and do all the things you can only do when it’s warm out and the sun sets at 8 pm. I want to sink my teeth into the season and get all I can from it. I want to be exhausted and sun-drunk and content by the time September comes, still licking the sunshine off my fingers like juice from a ripe nectarine.

August is the month of “one more”. One more dip in the pool, one more day playing beach volleyball by the lake, one more Aperol spritz. One more day to be young and free, and cradled by the heat and wrapped in the blanket of a balmy summer night. One more day of eating strawberries in the sun, glinting like rubies in the afternoon light, so that maybe when the snow kisses the ground again, we still have the warmth of summer fizzing in our blood to carry us through.