Here Comes The Sun

Joshua's mother dies in the summer.

The cicadas’ cry ring in the heat-heavy air. There’s warmth trapped within the black suit he hasn’t worn since he was hired as a coach, a size too tight from a slowing metabolism. His back is damp with sweat, and the sun pricks his neck, almost nostalgic.

Still, he sits outside instead, where the world around him seems larger than the walls of his childhood home.

Inside, his brother must be greeting guests. He always had been better at it than Joshua, whose grumpiness has been deeply etched into his personality, rearing its ugly head faster than the analytical mind he had been proud of. His brother probably wouldn’t be hiding outside, away from the bustle of the funeral, if he had been in Joshua's place.

His mother had always loved his brother more.

He rubs a thumb against the decade old callouses on his palm, circling them with the intentional track of a painter’s brush, letting his mind ebb and flow with the circumference of each scar. Breathe in the wind of a good pitch, breathe out the gust of a home run.

His eyes prick, and he blinks the memories of a voice he’s already struggling to remember.

She had loved him, ultimately. He knows this by the pull of skin against scar tissue, by the solid weight of a branded glove, by the memory of nagging and tutting and the click of a first aid kit being placed in front of him.

It wasn’t fair of him to judge her.

Jonathan was a better son to be a better mother to.

With the pad of his thumb Jason swipes at his face and look up at the blue, blue sky. There is nothing much like the feeling of the ground’s slipping from beneath you, but the world still continuing to move.

She deserved this, he supposed.

She had worked too hard to get anything but a summer farewell.