Goodbye, August - Sherry Ning

I’m writing this as I wait for my (delayed) flight to Brooklyn, where I’ll be spending the last week of August, 2025. I just finished a bowl of oatmeal and a bacon sandwich. I feel my political orientation inch rightward as the paper straw in my juice disintegrates rapidly. August is the Sunday of months. There’s an ancestral feeling of transition, from toil to harvest, from dreams to realizations. The soul wants to slow down, the body wants to rest, the mind wants to wander to different neverlands, all of them thousands of miles apart. The hands are idle. The heart is sleepy. The eyes are relaxed. The stone fruits are so ripe you can smell them through the plastic bag. The afternoons are too stuffy, too hot. People are booking their travels, either to go home or to find their last opportunity to get out before the plot reinvents itself. August. The Janus who stands in the doorway of seasons, smiling with both welcome and warning because it’s a feast day for nostalgia, for the uncanny

I’m writing this as I wait for my (delayed) flight to Brooklyn, where I’ll be spending the last week of August, 2025. I just finished a bowl of oatmeal and a bacon sandwich. I feel my political orientation inch rightward as the paper straw in my juice disintegrates rapidly. August is the Sunday of months. There’s an ancestral feeling of transition, from toil to harvest, from dreams to realizations. The soul wants to slow down, the body wants to rest, the mind wants to wander to different neverlands, all of them thousands of miles apart. The hands are idle. The heart is sleepy. The eyes are rel