July
and not giving up
Hello friends! I hope you are all enjoying the summertime and avoiding the various calamities and parasites that have been making their rounds.
Today’s substack is a celebration of my favorite pass time as a July baby: feeling my feelings in big ways and trying to make sense of them in the context of art and storytelling.
Enjoy.
The persistence of the crab
July. Cancer season. My birth month.
The days are hot. Its the month of cherries, green beans, and watermelon. Clouds bring sunlit rain so warm you feel like you’re going to burst into bloom. We sit giggling in the shade because even out of the sun, its still so damn hot.
The nights are thick. The forest at the end of the yard floods with dark green shadows so deep you can dive into them. If you lie on your back in the grass you can drift forever among the fireflies and stars.
We’ve lived here for six months, safe in our new home, but there is burning beyond this little eden. Burning that has destroyed everything we cared about. The sun is blood red. Even the horizon is hazy. We don’t speak of it. We wash the soot from our mouths with lemonade and popsicles and go for a swim. She is learning to tell knock knock jokes. I am learning to laugh again.
The truth is I am neither here nor there. I’m trapped, caught between two impossible dates: the day I left and the day I’ll finally be free. I am underwater, lungs bursting, swimming like mad towards the surface. I keep reaching up up up, but the light refracts, and I find the air is still just out of reach.
It was supposed to be last week. Then it was supposed to be the end of July. I had planned that day in my mind. The judge would nod. The papers would be signed. I would step outside and savor that first breath of fresh air. I prepared a box for the remains of that other life. Now that day is gone again, rescheduled to “a later date”. More paperwork. More phone calls. Be patient. I cannot afford the tears or the disappointment. I am her shell, her home, until she outgrows it. She is learning to ride her bike. I’m learning to be indestructible.
So I swim back down to the bottom where the water is coolest. I’ve been holding my breath for eternity, swimming in and out of moonlight and intersecting timelines. I become a thousand different things: a dancer, a home-maker, a life-saver: and then break apart again into nothing with the current. One day I will breathe again.
It is July. Cancer season.
Thank you for reading!
-Astrid