Melanie said someday she's going to move where it is always summer. This is a dream she has, with moving her trailer out of the park and into an open field in the country with her boyfriend (soon to be her husband; she's only 19 and I'll never really know how it got this way, but there you are).

If it was summer too much of the year I'd ache from scratching bug bites and crisping in the sun; and beautiful things, too many of them, could warp and jade me.

The last time I puked I think I'd eaten too many raspberries.

I do crave a sun-splattered swimming hole and open spaces open arms and a bronzed American boy with nearly a panic-stricken love of everything, the one that used to paralyze me cuz I thought I was the only one. In a worse way, I crave the moonlit walks and the feeling of no tomorrow that summer brought only when I was little, before I knew what it meant.