The sun still burns my skin, like the passion once did. It was hot days by the water. The sound of the surf and smell of the salt forever engrained in my brain. A testament to a love that was and then wasn't. A lie and a truth. Betrayal, forever haunting a life now lived without you.

It was a summer long ago, a sick twist of fate that had us sharing a house on the beach. We could have fought it. But we said fuck it. That is where we began. It was hell and heaven at the same time. You were my savior in life and my destruction. You were crazy love and I was lost in the gravity that was you. I should have seen the writing on the wall. Heard the echoes on the wind from lover's past, crying over what you were to them. They were all around after all. Yet, I couldn't! You were mine and I was yours for that moment in time.

We didn't start right away. No instant-love for us. We were more a slow build to destruction. You had a harem come in the weeks before us. I was disgusted by it and you were just free. Judgment, that is what humans pass around. I didn't see that it was just a part of what you were looking for. Your heart was calling for something you didn't have. You came to the beach to find it or give yourself to the altar of no love. Nothing about you made sense to me. How could you? You were destined to burn bright. People would worship being a moment in your life. And I was a season of it. A fragment!

Being a fragment doesn't make me a lesser love to you in life. I wasn't a fragment at the time. I was a forever or so you told me. But what you said and what you did never lined up in the end.

You taught me the length of love is not the depth of love. Some will have a forever and others will simply have a breath. We should cherish both kinds equally but never live in the one that is gone. Yet, I never truly let go of you. Not because I wanted you still or maybe I did but because of what we had created in love.

We were more than skin to skin, soul-burning passion. We were more than sand on skin under the sun. We were just more.

You found that church, a beautiful dream. A twisted joke! You stood and pledged to me before that priest. You found the place where we would become one. Pleasure beyond words. A commitment! Forever! In that moment of sheer bliss, we created her. A beautiful piece of a love that would not last.

I found out you had a girl waiting on you the next morning in a note. You told me sorry, you had to go. You had to make it right. That I should wait. You'd tell me everything. You'd return to me. But you never did.

I looked for a sign of you. Asked how to contact you. Laws prohibited them from giving you back.

I cried for days. A mess from love. Why did you leave alone? Why did you not return? I stayed for the fall but by winter I was empty. Love no more! But yet I still had her. So I soldiered on. The fragment of who I once was, before you. You can't go from forever to no more in a breath and not be scarred.

I tried to hold on to salty kisses in the surf and making love under the moon. Our passion so deep it reached the deepest part of me. But I had to let go for her. I had to put it away for her. But I held on year after year to a season meant for only you.

You would forever be the force of nature that swept into my boring life and showed me a love one could never imagine. You showed me that letting go and living in the moment would become something that will forever stand the test of time. The memories of safe would get buried under your kind of crazy.

I don't hate you now. I may never truly have. I just couldn't understand the depth of love we shared disappearing into a letter tied in the bow of a lie. I couldn't understand passion that burned the very soul going out so quickly when you returned to a life you hated. I just couldn't understand any of it. You were mine and I was yours! Why should I have to be alone waiting on a man that would never return? Why should she have grown up without you?

I get it now. Summer flings can be something more or something less to the people that live them. Some will become a foundation for eternal love, while others become a memory. Sweet and beautiful but a fleeting thought. Just a dream! You and I will never be either. I will never remember you like a dream. I will always search for us in the sand. I will always hear you on the whispering wind mixed with the surf. I will feel your kiss in the heat of the sun. Because we were something more. I was a victim of your gravity. And I will love that forever. I will love you forever.

I will tell her about the songs you sang me each night under the moon. I will share with her what I can about us. Show her that she is a testament to love.

And I'm sorry, you will never know her. Never hear her call to you or tell you that she loves you. Maybe you will! You have that power to pull her into your gravity. Maybe she'll be the whispers of love you hear on the wind in the surf.

I now know your truth, the lie, and all the secrets you held back. I can't fault you for that. I think you were a victim of my gravity as much as I was yours. I think you tried to drive me away at first but I pulled you back. I made you fall in love with my kind of crazy. The same as I fell in love with yours.

I think I see now more truth then what I saw then. I think I know that what we had was once in a lifetime. Once you have it you can't find that same love again. We would never have remained a fling or a summer love if fate hadn't demanded it. If we had known that last night, skin on skin, push and pull, heart and soul would be our last we would have savored it more. Tried to make it last longer, changed what would come to pass. But fate is a tricky bitch and she demanded us be just that season, that fragment. So she got you to wake up and leave.

I don't blame you for leaving now. I did then. I hated you for it but I didn't truly. I was sad and angry, screaming to the surf that I was wrong. That I was drowning in love. I prayed so hard not to feel it again. To never feel another heartbeat in sync with mine. The way yours always did. I didn't want crazy love anymore because I lost you and with that loss, I lost it.

I should have had more faith in you or us. To know there had to be some reason, there had to be some truth to who we were. And I wouldn't be here today telling you this if it wasn't for him. He'll never be summer. He's spring! A rebirth of love brought to me by you. Sent as a miracle, looking for your crazy love. Needing to settle something for you. He didn't pull me into his gravity. He's a steadfast love!

How you knew I would need it was beyond me. How you planned for something no one else could have is a testament to your crazy love. To protect the passion of just a season. The fragment you had once by sending someone to be what you could not.

He doesn't hate that I listen for you on the wind or feel you in the sun. He can't because he understands what you were to me. I don't seek you out often though. It would be unfair to my spring love to only hold on to the summer one too tightly.

I know my words don't line up. That like you, they are crazy love. One-minute hating and the next minute loving. But that is love. A crazy, intense emotion that sends us to heaven and throws us to hell all in the same breath. Love is meant to do that. Love is meant to transcend what we know and understand.

I know that what we had was real so I will whisper I love you in the wind and say goodbye. She's waiting for me with my spring. He said she brought him, them back to life. A second chance at love. So we will all miss you and some will forever curse what was done to you. And we know your gravity will pull us each to you one day. Intertwining our souls to yours as we whisper in the wind against the surf those we will also leave behind. You will forever be the harsh summer sun to us all. Something we curse and look forward to in the same breath because you are happiness and harshness, love and hate, forever in a moment; a dream. True love, lost love, stolen love! Fate will remind us in the dog days that even summer can be cruel. She'll show us that it can pull anyone in. That it is freedom from a grind. A let your hair down, passionate time. She'll show how it will pull in lovers and tear others apart. But in it, all she'll show us love in summer runs deep. It is a forever in the moment kind of love. So goodbye, my summer I'll see you again.