Seasonal Constitution – Rosalind Margulies

July 29, 2025

Springtime. It’s always later til it’s not; finally I ask and you say no. Two years I was in love and the whole time I knew better. But what’s the point in betting on high odds?
Summer comes despite me. I fall into a season of long walks and fresh fruit. The government gives me $280 SNAP credit per month and I spend it all on dark red cherries from the fancy grocery store and eat them for dinner for three months straight. I can’t be alone; quantum mechanics, I don’t exist until someone’s looking at me. And even then I am a mimic of myself, body-snatcher in my own body; I make mid-conversation calculations: Should I laugh? Would I laugh here? I just can’t get it right anymore and I’m sure everyone can tell. I cry on a therapy Zoom call taken in my car so my roommates don’t hear, tell my psychologist that I do the same things but they just don’t feel the same anymore and she tells me maybe that’s just how it is now. I tell a friend I’m considering buying a new pair of the same sandals I’ve worn everyday for the past three years and she says maybe I should get a different pair. She tells me that she used to work for a woman who painted her bathroom a new color every six months without fail. She asked the woman, But what if you like one of the colors and want to keep it? and the woman answered, But what if I like the next color more?
In the end I don’t buy any sandals at all; I wear mine until the straps come off
My ex-boyfriend texts me and says he doesn’t think we should talk anymore and I don’t answer him because I know he’s right. I’m a bit of a hoarder, can’t let go of love, coming or going it doesn’t matter. Summer and I’m pried off; remedial lessons in leaving where I’m not wanted, in finding places where I am, in letting go of what doesn’t want to be held
Fall and
I meet a beautiful boy on Hinge; he’s sitting shotgun when I back my car into my roommate’s on our second date; there is no third
I get my first office job and write shitty poems with names like “the LinkedIn profile picture of Dorian Gray” on my work computer; when I quit, I throw a party
I spend the fourth Thursday of November wandering the woods on mushrooms; home never feels far away til Thanksgiving
I fall fifteen feet off a bouldering wall and break both bones in my right arm; my insurance company charges me $44,000 for my trouble
I have friends over for dinner; I have movie marathons alone; I read books and I write stories; I talk to my mom on the phone; I hear and share good and bad news; I go to funerals, I go to birthday parties, I go to weddings
I find and lose my footing a thousand times;
I leave and come back, over and over;
I learn that letting go of something means making space for something new;
letting something else hurt the same
Fall and
hands at the back of my neck; we have to stop, we’re laughing so hard
Winter brings frost that lasts all day and three tries to start my car in the morning. I walk backwards from the bad times, watch them get smaller til they almost disappear. Not over it, exactly, but around it, far enough beyond it that I forget I ever had to change my course at all
I don’t need to forgive you for anything; I forgive you anyway
Springtime again and it’s a whole year I haven’t been in love with you. I think about how I felt back then and it’s like trying on a stranger’s clothes. We meet for lunch. You are different; I am different. Maybe we are the changing, not what remains despite it. Springtime again and I buy white cherries with my own debit card. Springtime again and I look at apartment listings in a new city. Springtime again and I meet new people and I grow to love them, over and over and over again. Can you imagine that?
How lucky am I?