My pale limbs dangle where my cousins swim, their languid bodies glistening under the water. They are family and they are strangers. They have my blue eyes, my brown hair, but watching them I feel we are nothing alike. The Atlantic stretches between us. I cannot swim.

Above I hear the singing of the cicadas, their strange chirping still alien to me. They shed their brittle wings and bronze-cast shells into the pool, fleeing those hollow corpses, made anew for the change of season. They take to the skies before me. I cannot fly.

Beneath their symphony lies a deeper drone, a thudding shudder drumming in the back of my mind. I realize it is me who makes this vile sound. The humidity strangles me, thick and moist. It slimes down my throat. I cannot breathe.

It is summer, my thirteenth summer, but a summer unfamiliar to me. This heat is not right. Their sun must be different. I burn here.

Éabha Ní Lionáird is an Irish English Literature student at the University of Galway, Ireland. She likes to write about humanity and the natural world, and injecting melancholy into nostalgia. She was a nominee for the 2026 Smedia awards for Best Short Fiction.