By Divyanka Shaw
It’s crazy how I know the scattered rays of the sun, how they look every morning at 7 a.m. in each season. How August skies are always so pretty. When there’s a shift in the pattern of my silhouette that forms at the same time every month. How the rain feels different in December and June when it touches my skin. The dragonflies return every September, the breeze of February, the warmth of March, and the way the winds change direction every October.
Now, it’s all become so routine, like how every Christmas Eve I bake cookies, and every other day of December is filled with roses. May always brings back the same feeling of when I first fell in love, as if it’s still the same. And there’s the second analemma I’m still trying to figure out, tracking the sun’s loop like a quiet habit. Then November rolls around, and I’m suddenly drawn to the moon again. I spend too many nights just staring at it, as if it holds answers I’m too shy to ask for. Its soft glow, the way it changes shape is what I look upon, until I drift off to sleep.
Then every January, I find myself listening to the same song on repeat, the one I first heard when I met him. It brings a memory bittersweet, echoing the way things used to be. The tune lingers in the cold air, playing softly in the background, almost like it’s trying to remind me of a time when everything felt new and full of promise.
Every July, I catch myself wanting to call my friend to share if the sky is particularly beautiful or if a rainbow appears so they don’t miss them. Even though we haven’t spoken in a while, these moments remind me of them.
And every July, when it rains, I’m reminded of a song I had forgotten. The sound of the rain seems to bring it back to mind, though I can’t quite recall the lyrics or the melody. It’s as if the rain stirs up memories of the song.
And then on a random day in August, I get reminded that this doesn’t last long. “This too shall pass”—those words reverberate, leading me into introspection, whether I like it or not. Maybe I want to hold on to these moments forever, like a long-lost friend who returns every year but always feels a little different, a little further away. The rain, the wind, the sun, and the moon, they all come back, but not quite the same.
I wonder if one day the measures I use to track these moments will fade. Maybe I won’t see my silhouette in the same place at 7 a.m. or find December roses at the little shop by the corner that always felt like a secret. Perhaps the streetlights will cast shadows in ways I won’t recognize, and the rain will touch my skin differently, not like the soft caress I’ve grown to know.
There’s an ache in realizing that I can’t freeze time, that the dragonflies won’t always circle above me in September or that the breeze of February might lose its familiar bite. It’s like standing at the edge of something that’s always slipping away, no matter how tightly I try to hold on. The seasons will continue, and so will I, in some different way I can’t yet see.
It’s a quiet grief, this knowing. Like watching the last light fade at the end of the day, when the sky goes from blue to gold to the darkest shade of twilight. And yet, there’s comfort in the repetition, even if it’s fleeting. Because maybe these little rituals—the cookies, the moonlit nights, the forgotten songs—are my way of remembering, of grounding myself in the parts of life that refuse to be held but insist on being felt.
By Divyanka Shaw
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