Summer

A late-summer poem about stories we tell ourselves and what we find instead

As we leave summer behind us and step into autumn I would like to share a poem that I wrote at the close of the season. Summer evenings have a way of slowing us down. Maybe it’s the sound of cicadas rising and falling like a chant, or the way fireflies blink their quiet constellations in the fields. Maybe it’s simply the iced tea sweating on the porch, reminding us to pause and notice.

I wrote this poem because I’ve been thinking about the stories we tell ourselves—especially when we’re young. For me, there was a time when I thought I wanted to be “famous.” I didn’t even know what that really meant, only that it seemed like proof of mattering. Over time, I realized the deeper longing was simpler: I just wanted to matter.

The hard and beautiful part was discovering that “mattering” doesn’t come from an audience, or applause, or the outside world deciding you’re worthy. It begins inside. It begins when you choose to matter to yourself. And once you claim that, you start to see that the thing you’ve been searching for was never actually missing.

This poem is a reminder to me—and maybe to you too—that summer isn’t just a season of brightness and noise, but also of quiet revelations.

SUMMER

She wanted to be famous.
She told the story in summer —
iced tea on the back porch,
the evening cicadas 
a background cadence,
the fireflies stitching the field.

With time, she realized
she just wanted to matter.
Once she learned to matter to herself,
she saw:
what she had long wanted
was already hers.