The Weight of Summer

The scent of lavender is a memory of heat. It is a strange thing, to carry the sun in a dried stem through the long, blue months of the northern winter. We keep these small, brittle ghosts in drawers, tucked away between wool sweaters and heavy socks. They do not ask for much. They only wait. There is a quiet violence in how they hold onto their color while the world outside turns to iron and salt. We look for permanence in a landscape that is constantly being erased by the wind. Perhaps we are wrong to look for it in the earth. Perhaps it is only found in the things that refuse to fade, even when the frost reaches the glass. Does the flower know it is being kept, or is it simply waiting for a warmth that will not return?

Nuno Alexandre has taken this beautiful image titled Lavender. It captures that brief, suspended moment before the cold takes hold. Can you still smell the summer in these petals?