Honeysuckle Summer Dream

It was a peculiar summer. Birds migrated upside down, heading north to south, and the air tasted of caramel and chocolate. The sweetness was palpable, dripping from honeysuckle, pollinated by bumblebees, and falling into the river, where a heron strolled, bewildered, in search of a meal. My existence amid the heat felt both trivial and distant. I'd accepted my insignificance, that I was just a tiny drop in the vast machine of the world. Who was I to question any of it? Complaining would probably result in blank stares into nothingness. Any unnecessary burden had to be shed to avoid being weighed down. But now, things felt different.

Whenever I scream now, I'm met with judgment. Judgment from people who don't have a clue what I've endured just to stay alive. They don't understand the effort it takes to purge the negativity they so easily instilled in me, negativity that's surprisingly still there. It's a subtle badness, the kind you'd miss on your way to work or the shops. No one sees it because they mask it with external things that they have access to. I don't. And that's the difference.

Talking about it with "normal" people never went well. They hid their true feelings behind a mask of learned professionalism and values, which gave their lives meaning. Since my life didn't match their ideals, and theirs didn't match mine, we were like two separate planets on the same Earth. When we clashed, we shattered into countless pieces, with nothing in common. We retreated into our own familiar worlds.

I found it easy to get lost in my thoughts. When I'm alone and my mind wanders, anything can happen. Minutes, hours, even days melt into weeks and months, and before you know it, an entire year has vanished. Since June, this idea had been lurking in the background of that crooked building I was trying to describe and weave into my story. Once I finally did, it never left my sight, only digging deeper into my memory. The same happened with all the city buildings, urging me to make them the setting for my narrative. With no one to share my most important thoughts with, I invented them all.

Every story I created in this city had a special sweetness, the kind you'd want to experience on your birthday or at Christmas. It had its own life, far removed from the city's dirt and grime, though it also had its own imperfections born from the creative process. It was a map of a new world, existing only on paper, yet so real that anyone reading it could picture the blue-eyed blonde boy and the Black man with an Afro on the run from the law, but really, running from themselves. They never intended to succeed, consumed by their own flawed perspectives and easily falling into trouble, creating more problems than solutions.

I spent the last year with them. I experienced the highs and lows - I cried, I grieved, I got married, and divorced. What initially felt like a fleeting illusion, born from miscalculations and shattered dreams, transformed into the most incredible adventure imaginable. It was all there on the page, yet utterly real, etched into my very being of crooked feet and crushed toenails. With my head in the clouds and my focus unwavering, I had a single goal: to reach the end of this path and declare, “I did it, and now it's time to rest.”

Farewell to honeysuckle and bumblebees, to the heron and birds in flight. I dream of the day when we will meet again and dance beneath a joyful cloud, when the sky wraps itself in the sweetest cotton candy. Perhaps after I weather this storm, its flashes searing my vision, that day will come. After all, even in a world brimming with hardship, miracles are still possible.