Once June arrives, I become convinced that my life is about to end. I enter the season, shedding my heavy winter leathers, my furs and polyesters, removing, revealing, inch by inch, every line of my stomach, every hair on my legs, borne into the heat with a shy, icy insecurity. I’m not afraid, I will say, though I cross my bare legs and crouch low to the grass, low, low, as invisible as I can be. I fixate upon the little things because I must be loved. I must fling as one is to do during these blistering three months. I don’t stand a chance in this heat, I think, but I’m here and I must try, maybe someone will see me, maybe someone will love me.

With this prickly grass on my naked back, amidst the newest performance of Shakespeare in the park, the sun will cut me open with his scalpel. I will lie bare, for all to see, and she will be there, too. Hamlet will croon to that old fool about life and death and before him the sun will be operating on my heart. My skin will be tinged a red so rosy it’s blue. I will whistle our songs on the wind and wonder if anyone else recognizes the hazy melodies. I will call out to her, once the anesthesia has worn off and my innards are stitched up, I will call her name into that festooned amphitheater and only silence will respond, only silence, only silence. Have I said anything at all? My skin will burn and I’ll try again. And since it is June, and with June my untimely demise, I will burn up eternal into that bright sky, only to descend upon the earth come November. I will fall upon the ground as fat, cold snowflakes. I will dust the surface of her cheeks and seep into her hair and maybe she will know. She will see me in that flake upon her fingertip and look up into the sky and know that I’m up there, I’m all around her, I’m in the tousles of her hair. When the next summer comes a-roaring, I will be back there, reborn again upon that stage, so big and bright, so hot and cold. Snowflake fingers and rosy, sunbleached skin. I will perform this soliloquy. I will extinguish, and I will try again.