midwesternmule

[midwesternmule]

nathaniel russell

[midwesternmule]

its cold where i am, warmer than earlier this week though, when i would walk to class with two pairs of thick socks inside my boots and ice formed so thick on the gravel of my apartment parking lot that my truck has stayed stationary for the better half of january. 

i’ve been daydreaming of the warmer months that we experience here in the heart of the states, not yet the hellish days where i wish for winter again and feel the humidity so thick that it sticks in my throat and makes my curls twice as frizzy, but rather the gentle 70 degree nights where i can bring out the hammock to my front porch and set up the tv against my window to watch plotless movies while me and my brother reminisce about our childhood and roll ugly joints. 

in these daydreams, the girl on the other side of the country — the one that i care for so deeply but cant seem to bear to say as much — is stuffed in the hammock with me, our legs intertwined while we sip the cheap wine i bought from the liquor store a few blocks down the hill from the man who no longer asks for my obviously fake id, or maybe she’s sitting on the knobby wooden planks below me while i rake my hands through her self-trimmed hair as she reads me vonnegut and our shared cigarette’s ashes shower the pages. 

later in the night i’d turn on my ancient AC and pull out the futon so we can sleep curled into each other, arms wrapped around slow breathing bodies and fingers woven together. maybe by now we’d have kissed, though knowing us we haven’t, but strangely i think we are both okay with that. my friends don’t quite understand that, but as cliche as it sounds, i don’t need them to. i’d be wearing a tank top and boxers, and she would be wearing a silly pun shirt that she has too many of. i’d hope that she notices the freckles that appear after days in the sun, the ones she told me she loves so much the summer before, and i’d silently admire the tan she can keep up all year due to the beach being a 15 minute walk from her dorms. we would talk about nothing for an hour or two after laying down, giggle at the sounds of other drunk 20-somethings wandering home from the bars close to my building. 

the next morning i’d wake with the warm sun coming in bright through the blinds i’d forgotten to close the night before, laying back down if she hadn’t woken up yet, or maybe if i’d received a moka pot ive asked my mother for as a birthday gift i’ll make her some coffee, she’s the reason i started to love hot coffee after all. maybe we would go to the pastry place across town that we always stop at after a night of drinking, looking as disheveled as every time before. maybe we would go to the donut place my father showed me, the one i promised to take her to earlier this month.

normally she would leave to go back to the town where i grew up and where we met, but in these daydreams she stays with me for the day, and since its a sunday we laze about in my notably less crowded college town, walking downtown streets and rifling through thrift store clothing racks and the record shop’s collections, as i have somehow acquired a record player for my tiny apartment that floats music through the open porch door, which i’ve left open so the incense smoke can reach us outside as we sit on my floor cushions and play cards, shitty but tolerable beer bottles at our sides. 

these daydreams seem to warm me from within, like the ambience of an early summer’s day has some how transcended my consciousness and soaked into my very bones. i’m cruelly reminded of reality though when i open my eyes to scoot further under my three blankets as i have began to shiver slightly while typing. the futon isn’t pulled out to accommodate the warm body of another, but rather because it’s further from the drafty window on the western wall. i’m up too late, not because of a long conversation that i’ll cherish but because the memories of them make me so painfully aware of that which i miss most right now.

its not the summer’s heat that i dream of.