Carissa Jean
Summerache
We remember summers where Passion Pit was blaring from sticky speakers. Everything slick with sweat because none of us had access to air conditioning. Thighs tacky with last night’s leftover saliva we piled onto bikes, into cars, inside houses. Bodies swaying and licking and salty. The future is calling. Our phones fill up with messages from aunts and fathers and mothers who remind us we are lucky to be alive. We try to save these voices for eternity by begging underpaid workers to please keep them safe because for now we are all rosy cheeks and noses nubbing into armpits. Dog food breath but still kissing. Waking up at midnight to meet someone. Keys and wallets and credit cards rolling underneath vinyl-topped bar stools and disappearing into a night we only know for now. They still treat you like an adult even when you’re not so we learn to lie with split tongues and never look authority in the eye. Red and blue pulsing lights match the beat of the song, the club, the violence. We let summer juices drip down our chins and slip stone fruit before it’s in season because we want to swallow the sun and believe it to be possible. Hands get placed on throats on backs on loose change so we can ride the bus home later. It takes us two hours, but we walk from downtown to our house by the highway. There’s detours to climb up metal, swing from scaffolding, avoid train tracks. All the girls don’t want to walk under the bridge because our ancestors told us not to but the boys guffaw at this and call us scared. To prove we’re tougher than they are, we all crouch to pee in a park only two blocks from home. We can’t contain ourselves. The gods of summer have smiled upon us and gifted us with green zebra tomatoes in the garden, a dog who only bites bad boyfriends, and roof access to a new vat of apartments being thrown up. Vomiting and heaving, we make fun of the boys down the street who shit themselves from eating too many oysters. The dog learns how to open the oven and eat the duck we were slow roasting. We try to feed him rice to soak up all the fat juices brewing in his stomach but we end up having to quarantine him in the bathtub all night. Letting the shower swallow all of his mistakes as they emerge. Our landlord never comes around, but there is a church across the street and they complain about the smell. We open our windows and blast the music that makes us sweat, makes us dance, makes us long for home. We hope the congregation feels our earthquake because we want them to know we love life and know how to seize it with both hands. Knees crack on all fours as the backyard opens up and ushers us towards the end of summer. Panting and salivating, we shoulder into the tunnel of heartbreak, of car crashes, of empty bank accounts, of dead end jobs, and the promise of more. As the ocher summer haze gets further and further away, our voices echo back to each other to keep our bodies close. But our mouths can only jowl out the sounds of broken leases, who to call for a large garbage pickup, how to divide the ashes of the dog. Tangy like licking metal we feel our skin shedding and tacky. To be birthed out the other end means we become our mother with white sneakers and frilled socks. Smiles and perfectly crisp linens. We are happy, we say. Don’t, says the mother we’ve become. Palms cracked and body tired, none of us have time to exist to each other anymore. Forgotten like the flavor of your favorite song, crushes no longer settle in the bottom of your stomach. Instead we give birth and pass the screaming child around until we decide she is spoiled. Waiting for the day she will wander out of the gated front yard and into the dirty spaces of summer.
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Carissa Jean is a screenwriter, sensitive poet, and maker of zines. She is a graduate from the IPRC and has the honor of her work appearing in Devastation Baby, Girls Like Us, and Grimoire Magazine. Most recently she was a Willamette Writers FilmLab 2024 cohort. But, more than anything, you can find her annoying her ornery cat in Woodacre, California.
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Image by Tobias Kaiser from Unsplash
