i've been burnt out for most of august & this is all i've written, sorry lol

They look very, very cool. They wear clothes the colour of sunrise. Tops and sweaters, not going to be sweat in for a longtime. The prying cold is coming again, and they feel as though it’s going to last a lot longer. now, they are not going to watch themselves grow, but instead, find themselves again. We watch, absently and lost, knowing who they are, but never saying a word. The birds caw with us. They walk on, their black skirt cold. Their boots crunch of unseen gravel. This is morning. An irrefutable, beautiful morning. They walk with a fleeting energy, walking with the rising dew. A small, but unique gift of morning.

They make sure to wear long sleeve shirts underneath their jumpers, otherwise their arms will itch. They pull the sleeves up into the palm of their hand, letting themselves be hidden by the colours of summer. Maybe they are holding onto it, they think. The air is crisp around them. The world is shadowy, with a morningly blue sky above them. The sky is made of lines, dashing, crossing, outlining simple shapes out of the endless sky. The streets are indistinguishable, colourless. They just need to be walked. 

They stop upon a bridge, stone and ancient lovers of moss, overlooking the sea. Water flows beneath them. When they were last outside, we cannot distinguish, but we recognise that this is not something they have seen in a long time. The sun hovers above everything. It is awake, cold, and a recoming of something larger. The streets the bridge stands between are filled with absent sunlight. This bridge, it relishes. Maybe this is what they came to see. The irrefutable, beautiful morning. The words purse her lips. They wiend around her teeth, tasting like blooming jasmine. All at once, the words come together. They could never be further apart, but, it is these words they know and share with a self that they never knew.

They move on. The energy is fresh and new. The shadowing streets, long and shifting, are cool, absent of anonymity. They walk on. Their stride and gait know no danger. Irrefutable, beautiful. They are no longer the person they once were.

We stop, watching them walk on. Tired, this town has made little sense since we arrived. The shadows assure us that the days just pass.
‘Time doesn’t make much sense here’ they tell us, shifting and sweet. ‘Do you know who they are?’ They ask us.
‘Afraid not, though, they seem unknowable, do you?’
The shadows tsk and mumble laughter. ‘No, no, we know nothing about them… they have lived here a while though, but they seem new. Let me explain…’ Our shortening days empty, we indulged the shadows. They told us about ‘three days, three stages of life,’ They walk on, but the shadows stay and talk. They are far more concise than expected.
We see them, the one wearing the colours of summer, now different. Smaller, naked, unknown. The walls are blending into one. Colours of beige are melting away from white and good decorative decisions. Beige is the rawest colour of uncomfort. The unclean windows bring in unclean light. The sunrise seems to last forever, the shadows grumble. They are there, tucked away in unsuspecting corners. Meanwhile, the summery one is deep in the sheets. The bed is awkward and low, but with the duvet neatly laid over the bed, it looks almost unslept in. The sheets are a faded pink. The desk is cluttered, a water bottle too far away from the bed. Empty books, speaking empty words. Unsharpened stationary. A burning candle, giving no fragrance. The room hangs heavy with the smell of the outside drain. It seeps in with the light. The navy carpet is unclean and, at its core, uncomfortable. The carpet seems to have reserved the room, every aspect held in its matted fibres. Rotting away, the carpet stays the same. They are naked, but no clothes allude to ever being in any other way. How long did they spend like this? The shadows found them as such, and that was never a good thing.

In this memory, they looked entirely different. Pale, untouched. They did not stop across the ground in heavy boots, but anonymously floated along floors, floating into kitchens and bathrooms and through doorways. They move one foot off the floor, as not to disturb the flotsam of dust. They eat nothing. The kitchen is just a forgotten ritual. Their body warns them about that. Nobody is knowing them. People move through, into the garden for a smoke. This is communal living. There were days of nothing, curled up in bed and imagining touch, their mind always flitting away at the notion of it, like eyelashes, stuck in the eye of the beholder. Words would not describe it. The days rambled on. The mood waved, waves locked into a small pond, going nowhere. But the water stayed the same murky, unclear ichor. People visited, but never for them. Two clauses, the first happening, the second disregarding them.

‘And how did they leave?’ We asked the shadows, now pooling around us, curling their hands with curiosity. We refused their touch. A deep habit.
‘Well, no, you seem to not know what we mean. It’s all hinging on how they… arrived,’ The shadows spoke in half thoughts, always seeming to be missing some important detail.
‘You mean, how they arrived was different from how they left? Was this not a place where they lived?’ Our curiosity and patience equally tested, we listened further.
‘They came by while the weather wasn’t clear as to what it wanted to be. The days of humidity. Somebody, the person there left, had left their door open. They managed to find their way in. It did nobody no harm, by the sounds of things. Everything meaningful stayed the same. The sunlight didn’t seem to go anywhere though. Meaning, lotsa room for us. They didn’t do much at all, no, but they lay there, and waited for their coming to pass on.’

‘And the hovering?’ This made no particular sense to us.
‘Well, you know it can be for them,’ They assumed something from us, a welcome familiarity. They carried on, ‘when there was nowhere for them to be, they needed to make some sense of it all. In that effort, they were locked somewhere else. Their mind had to go somewhere different to connect with… Well, their body just forgot what it was supposed to do. Every body doesn’t know what to do with itself, hm? Doesn’t need any attention. It forgets how to be seen, how to be looked at. Do you know what we mean?’ The shadows had looked up. Morning was beginning to spill over the tall houses, the sun glancing across the ground. Rushed of answers, they squeezed and squealed away, ferreting into a different space. So fast, we could not keep up. Clueless, we turned, returning our gaze down the road where they had just been. A body that forgets to be seen. Relying on deep, unknown rituals. What does the body feel when it’s left so alone, we pondered.

Our eyes drifted ahead of us. Where they were now, eyes set on where we were. No connection was made. They looked too vague to be staring at us, upon the hill they stood. Their skirt moved through the wind. They were still. Irrefutably, beautifully still. They were not the person we were trying to find. That person had left a long time ago, and now, they stood, waiting patiently. The cold, hosted not by shadows but the sun itself settles in every aspect of the town. Blinded by the sun, we lose all sight of them. The town sinks deeper into the cold. Colder and colder, though no snow falls, the seasons change deeper and deeper, until, a small memory of self is buried away. We’ll come back to the shadows, and ask them for more. What a strange summer this has been.