We’re lining a high-peaked ceiling with cedar in a house on a...

We’re lining a high-peaked ceiling with cedar in a house on a hill in a fancy suburb northwest of here, not far. It is fussy work and it is hot at the top of the ladders, and it is hot outside where I cut the boards, one at a time. I cut the board then bring it in to M., hand it up her, and she slots it in as I head out again and the next measurement follows me as I go. Forty-five and a strong three-eighths, she says. I repeat it, sometimes outloud, sometimes in my head. I cut. I return. I hand her the board. Forty-five and thirteen-sixteenths. Cut. Return. Forty-five and three-quarters. The lengths shift as we move up, answering the contours of old beams. The hours are spent within a cloud of cedar spray, looking at the sixteenths of things.

Summer is not my season. I am bad at heat. It feels a little like a disease: a flatness of head, a retreating, a difficulty with engagement, energy squelched, fire behind the eyes extinguished. The annual dulling. One of the first questions I will ask you: what is your favorite month? One of the other first questions I will ask you: what is your sibling situation? I’ve been wondering if they have anything in common, those two questions, besides time. I talked this weekend with a pal about seasons and she said in summer she feels more a part of the world. This made sense to me because that’s how I feel from November through February. If I pass you on the street and don’t meet your eyes, here, in the thick of July, or in smudged and weary August, it’s because I’m infected for the moment, under the weather, and will be until the air dries and the shadows get longer. In the meantime, the ceiling will be cedared, one board at a time, and summer everyday will shrink in its slow thick trudge towards fall.