SUMMER BREAK

I've got that August feeling from back then, or almost identical to,
- the one when school was about to start again. The summer break lied vast and boundless
as a one and only landscape, behind a bronzed back and salty hair, autumn soon & ahead.
I wonder why this year, she's right there beneath my skin,
the fourteen-year-old. Presumably because of this summer, with its constant
heatwave and no rain since May, because that in itself feels like Life's summers,

the way they are remembered in recollection. The way the summers back then felt

endless and both then & now held a heat so incessant it becomes encapsulated

in every layer of you. And now it goes through into each age inside of me.

I'm thinking it's an abandoned phone and in its place, - LIFE, also like back then;

before smartphones, social media & vulture necks arched over screens.

In its place a summer, vast and boundless behind a bronzed back.

Hair bleached by sun & salt having grown down the curve of my back,

innumerable dips in a Gotlandic blue lagoon with the euphoric shrieks of a 

little boy learning to float; carried over a still turquoise water and by an entire

extended family taking loving turns, long dinners at dusk with more

and more wine glasses emptied by candlelight deep into the balmy nights,

dripping ice lollies, barefoot mornings and naked nights between airy sheets.

With less of a presence like this, here, a more substantial one in real life

 that makes time stretch, just like it seemed to do back then,

May, June & July have a lie in, lingers in August and I've got peacefulness.

The finale turned out to be Stockholm dressed in its most lovely summer's hat

{that translucent straw one} with work that always feels much like the play of childhood,

liberated and liberating. Makers and Muse is slowly forming all at once.

Jossi creates a surrogate salon and cuts my bleached and waist long hair

and makes us all up magically, camera-ready.

We are sisters, mamas, friends and daughters. We are as if four,

fourteen & forty in one and autumn can come whenever it pleases.

Staring contest with Jossi. She won.

Makeshift salon mid-shoot. One decimetre of sunbleached off.

Catching our breath at Fabrique. Devoured cardamom bun in August light.

G&T breaks did some extra wonders for the creativity. 

The muse captured in a solo moment.

I've got that August feeling from back then, or almost identical to,

- the one when everything was just about to start anew.

By virtue of the sun and all the freedom, I'm feeling fourteen,

but in reality, I'm closing in quickly on forty. The well-acquainted

melancholy of things coming to an end doesn't appear,

more so a distress & dispiritedness outwards; about the environment

and about the political climate of my mother country,

but inwards mostly the healing of a true to life summer break.