“Lie on your back among the grass, looking up at the lazy, drifting clouds. What do you see?”

The words are stark against the page, black, like darkness splashed over snow. I bite my lip, and then erase what I have written. I know what I want to say, but I can’t put it down in words. How do you describe a summer day? How do you put into words the feeling of lying on your back beneath a languid blue sky, watching the day pass without needing to rush and fuss? It’s a time when the world itself relaxes around you, and nothing is ever wrong. Where are the words to describe that? How do you make someone far away feel that, when they’re sitting in a cold, dark room?

To write the words that would give that feeling…it would be like giving summer to someone. Imagine opening a gift scented with golden grass; with summer sunshine and fresh berries. A gift redolent with the feel of still, hot air, lazy from the heat; the coolness of watermelon juice on your tongue; the heavy wetness in the air right before a thunderstorm. A gift sewn with the sound of indolent bees in the tall grass; of the distant whisper of a creek; of a thunderstorm at the height of its wild fury. To give a gift like that would be to give a gift of light and life. Imagine their faces as they open it, the flash of joy, quickly followed by a flood of sweet memories they had forgotten until that moment. To give them something more precious than all of the wealth in the world—the gift of happiness, of the bittersweet joy of passing days, of times long-ago and nearly lost. Wouldn’t you give someone a gift like that, if you could?

I want to, and so I think of all these things, lying on my stomach in the cool, itchy grass, breathing in the smells of summer. What do I write? What do I say to give this gift?

And then I know. I smile and begin to write, the words so black against the snowy-white of the paper.

“Lie on your back among the grass, looking up at the lazy, drifting clouds. What do you see?”

The words are stark against the page, black, like darkness splashed over snow. I bite my lip, and then erase what I have written. I know what I want to say, but I can’t put it down in words. How do you describe a summer day?