August 24... Still

It always felt like a bomb had just exploded the ice-cream truck seconds from it reaching our house. The commercials would slowly feature less fun in the sun and more colorful backpacks and strategically placed pencils. August loved to sneak up on June and July and scare them away from the fun. This year, August was sick ans slowly crawled towards us. June and July had had the pain of following a shitty act from March, April, and May. There was no fighting us now. The excitement had been infected with disease and worsened with "modern day solutions" from uncertain people. We're still in August, despite it feeling like years between Sunday and Friday. We're in some grey space where we set alarms and put on polo shirts to sit at the kitchen table for hours. Fireflies and ice cream truck drivers watch us pretend to be coping well on Zoom calls as we draw boobs and penised in out notebooks instead of working. The end of this school year cannot come fast enough, but it never runs quite as fast as the beginning of the school year.