Midsummer Dreams in September
From "one day" to every day
"One day, I'm gonna date her," I told my friend.
I was staring at the girl who looked like she’d stepped out of a dream I hadn’t had yet.
Not a teenage dream.
A midsummer dream, real in the fall.
Skin tanned from a summer spent by the sea, now faded just enough to suggest September.
Hair, dark red like an ember pretending to sleep. You want to touch it, but you know you'd get burned.
She ties it in a ponytail—maybe to keep the world from catching fire when she moves.
It gives her face the full stage: almond-shaped brown eyes, a perfect nose, and a wide white smile she uses with restraint, not because she’s shy, but because she knows it can ignite chaos.
She was a vision, as if everything beautiful could be caught in a moment.
I used to get to school early just to watch her from afar.
And in those moments, it felt like we were the only two people alive, like those moments were already ours, even if only I knew it.
Years later, the distance vanished.
And the pronoun became real.
Real...
Reality is a curious thing.
It’s neither precise nor unique, but the sum of how each of us experiences the world, filtered through our point of view.
And because of that, no two versions are ever the same.
Sometimes, I wonder what her version was.
Did she ever picture a future where our pronouns became one?
Did she get to school early because I did too?
Did time slow down in the space between our looks?
Then I smile, realizing that such visions are reserved for those who can shift the world with nothing more than a smile or a toss of their hair.
And honestly, I don’t mind, and I won’t ask.
I don’t know why what I said that day became real. Or how.
I don’t know if saying it mattered.
And I don’t care.
Some mysteries are meant to stay that way.
They say dreams aren’t real.
Mine is.
And I get to wake up next to her every day.
We all have a “one day” story. Mine just happened to become every day.
What about yours?
…what a day…