Every year, August unsettles me. It is a month caught between distinct worlds — not quite summer, not yet fall. For me, it has recently carried the weight of memory, longing, and the bittersweet pull of time passing. This is my offering to the season of Lughnasa: the threshold month of August.
August is the month
that breaks my heart.
When I was a child on our farm,
my cousins came all summer long —
May, June, July.
But not August.
By late August,
school was on the horizon,
carrying both excitement
and dread.
A calling from the house I’m suspended in warm lake water A screen door slams in the distance We’re all packed up!
I wanted to love August.
I am the girl who stayed,
rooted here among memory and land.
But when August arrives,
photographs rush through my mind
of people grown, gone, or changed.
Children turned into adults
in faraway cities.
Elders now resting
with the ancestors.
So maybe I do love August too much.
Maybe that is why he breaks my heart —
with the full heat & strength of summer,
and the longing for the breaking of fall.
August doesn’t feel like summer.
And he is not yet fall.
He is a memory.
He is a longing.
He is a threshold.
This is why he returns again and again
to me.
August, again.
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