desperation and chicken feet

Summer has always felt like a feverishly hazy season for me. The season that yells at me. Maybe it’s the pressure of the sun’s rays beaming down at me to feel joy, Instagram flyers blipping at me with "community" as a buzzword, or coming of age films that seduce me into thinking all experiences are actually worth the pain. I’m prickled every summer by the white person's obsession with tanning. Summer reminds me of all that I’m not doing. You radiate off my skin but all I want is your coo to stay inside.

This summer, I could feel my desperation and sweat seeping out of my pores. I am incredibly discomforted.

This summer, I spent many studio days baked by the kiln with my skin cooking off. Post-cooling, I frequently found myself at Cermak, desperate for those freshly pressed juices lined on the shelves. Grocery shopping is never an efficient process for me. I lurk up and down the same aisle, fantasizing, eroticizing the mundane. 

I try to be methodical. But I can’t fight my urge to peer. The chicken feet placed in a row, so politely yet violently perched and contained, the decapitated fish heads blinking up at me dare me to find joy in their demise. The only thing separating us is an eerily thin saran wrap, and I can feel your skin on my fingertips. 

I fluctuate between hyperawareness and disassociation from my surroundings. It is the wave of steady, sticky depression that follows me since my adolescence to early adulthood. Joy feels triumphant but temporary. Depression feels like sinking oil that always exists in the bottom. That’s what you do to me. 

Dissatisfaction that I can’t shake off… I love floating in water, biking next to Chicago cars that hit and run… that coconut ice cream that cools my tongue. But some days, I sit inside in my air conditioned room as the day passes me by. Admittedly, I prefer it over the sticky, boisterous heat that makes my chest feel all muffled. I am a deliberate person, and summer has always felt like a fast, irritating reminder of my inability to keep up. By June, I'm usually quietly mulling over my discomfort with summer, wondering why everyone is always so excited to feel like they can’t breathe.

I’m excited for the releasing breeze and red noses. To be bundled and swallowed. And for hot coffee.

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