Something was off about my summer. Something was missing. I hadn’t had any watermelon. And late being better than never, unless you are trying to conceive or cheat death, I added a quarter watermelon to my grocery order and saved a small piece of summer.

Watermelon is confectionary fruit. It is a fruit, isn’t it? No. I’ve just checked. It’s technically a vegetable. Odd. Watermelon, the confectioner’s vegetable. One of my favorite beginnings of a book goes like this: “In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again, as my life was done in watermelon sugar.” That’s Watermelon Sugar by Richard Brautigan. I just love the rhythm of that sentence.

Watermelon is so refreshing. And sweet. And while it might not be as good as the summertime watermelon I used to have on my grandma’s farm, it was still a reasonable likeness. My grandmother’s house always smelled exactly of melon. Always. But not watermelon, the other kind. It was only recently that I discovered what that pervasive childhood smell was. Honeydew melons or something, aren’t they called? Sweet. But also vegetative. The house might have been built out of it, judging by the smell.

Meanwhile, as a lad, I would sit on the porch and get myself sticky with the pink stuff.

But something is still off. No, a bite of watermelon can’t fix everything. I’m out of fuel, out of motivation, out of sorts. It’s like that bit during the dance where you’ve missed the rhythm and you try desperately to recover, hoping nobody noticed. I’m off the rhythm. I’m not sure how I got off the rhythm. But I feel all clumsy. I’m all thumbs. A walk with Murphy doesn’t set things right. Another cigarette won’t fix it. A nap, a long sleep, a bath, nothing sets things right. I crawl in my own skin. It’s nearly as if I’ve suddenly come to inhabit my own life only I don’t understand a thing, and I’m faking it. Like on a soap opera where, for a day, a week, a few weeks, somebody new is playing your favorite character. I’m playing my own life but nothing feels right. I am confounded. The voices in my head are speaking a brand new language. Or a really old one.

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