Everything Is Coming Up Roses

This is my love letter to you in every issue. A thread pulled from my mind and laid across the page, like a finger tracing your reflection on a fogged-up mirror; clearing just enough space to see. A looking glass, a small window into my mind and my heart. Here I gather the fragments that linger with me and offer them to you—reaching across the pages with a piece of myself.

In the summer, we like to keep our hands and feet on the hot pavement and watch them sear.

I've become keenly aware of this one stretch of pavement in my backyard that reaches ungodly temperatures even when the sun dips behind clouds. It absorbs every ounce of heat and radiates it back into the air—a scorching sun beneath our soles. The stones create something of a lava-fueled minefield where I would test my bravery every time, walking barefoot until the heat blooms up my legs. The soles of my feet and skin scream in warning until finally I've had enough. 

I hop forward into the shade like a child playing that game I never really outgrew. But this got me thinking, wasn't this what summer always asks of us, always had in store for us? To toe the line between pleasure and pain, to let something burn us just enough to feel alive. 

Every year without fail, summer calls us back to old love stories and faded friendships. The ones that singe at the edges of our memory for better or worse. Reminded of how it ended last time, messy, fearful, joyous, or silent, but something about those summer months makes us brave enough (or foolish enough) to try again. 

As soon as the days stretch long and the nights grow soft and loose, we feel the current drive us to reach out. That summer heat grips us tight and pulls us into old lovers who left us raw. To friends, we swore off in colder months. To versions of ourselves that felt freer, more dangerous, slightly sunburned. It doesn’t matter how many times they have hurt us, or how much we’ve healed—we wander back anyway, testing the heat. 

Like the pavement, those connections hold heat long after we’ve stepped away. Maybe we’re drawn to them because they’re familiar, because they keep us warm in a way no cool, steady surface ever could. The summer months foster a foundation for passion and pain to blossom. 

Perhaps we do this because there’s a certain romance to it. There’s a thrill in knowing something has an expiration date. There is an end to these stories; they will come and go with August and September. We can pull our feet away from that hot stone at any moment and find some shade. 

The east coast summer of bare feet and burnt shoulders will fade. We’ll retreat indoors, brushing sand off our ankles, and try to forget the sting. But the question lingers: will this summer heat only sear off the skin we’ve outgrown, or will it peel back something more—some hidden, tender layer we didn’t know we carried? Could it leave us raw and wiser, or simply scarred? Perhaps that’s the seduction of summer. It’s not in its permanence, but in the gamble. 

There is a part of you that lets go. You let their fingers trace your shoulder blades and tell them something you shouldn't have said. But there’s always a choice: do we retreat, protecting our skin from further damage? Or do we let the heat seep deeper, hoping it might burn away the old scars to reveal a softer, truer layer beneath? 

Our skin gracefully renews itself after a sunburn. First, there’s redness, sensitivity, the sharp reminder of what you’ve done. Then peeling—little translucent flakes shedding like memories. Finally, a patch of fresh skin emerges, tender but stronger somehow. Maybe this is what we’re hoping for every summer—that by returning to the fire, we’ll come out not destroyed but transformed. Of course, it doesn’t always work that way. Some burns leave scars. But maybe that’s the seduction of summer. It isn’t about permanence. It’s about gambling. About standing barefoot on hot pavement, feeling the burn spread upward, and deciding—just for a moment—that the warmth is worth the risk. Because sometimes we don’t want safety. We want to feel real.