𝗟𝗜𝗧𝗘𝗥𝗔𝗥𝗬: “August” by Summer Pasadilla

 

Layout by: Cristian Tulisana

Published by: Shaina Pajarillo 

Date Published: January 23, 2026

Time Published: 11: 08 AM

Category : Prose

Theme: Wishing well is a quiet and noble act of love.

August smells like sunbaked sidewalks and the faint scent of her favorite flowers, the ones I never got to tell her I remembered. Every morning, when the wind shifts just right, it carries a memory of her laugh, and I smile quietly, letting it bloom inside me alone. Loving her from afar is like tending a secret garden that's private and quiet, and entirely mine.

Nights are the hardest. The streetlights flicker like distant fireworks as I walk home from school, and I imagine her running beneath them, chasing dreams I can’t follow. I celebrate her victories in the shadows even the small triumphs she probably doesn’t even realize she’s achieved. 

I catch myself in ordinary moments—her favorite artist playing on the radio, her handwriting on a note I found in my memory. Every detail becomes a reminder that she exists beyond my reach, in a world I am grateful to witness silently.

Quietly, I write down her accomplishments in a journal no one will read. Each entry is a celebration of her life and her triumphs. I do not need acknowledgment or thanks; it is enough that she shines somewhere else and that I, in my corner, see it.

And when the seasons begin to shift, when August drifts toward September, I imagine her walking forward, smiling, unburdened by my longing. I send her good wishes like invisible birds, carrying joy she doesn’t have to know I offered. Loving someone so completely and privately is a strange sort of freedom—pain wrapped in gratitude.

Hope lingers in small things: a text I don’t send, a memory I don’t revisit aloud, a quiet toast to her happiness before the world wakes, and more of the love I could've shown her. I am proud from afar, and that pride is enough. It is enough to feel the warmth of her victories, even if I cannot be the one standing beside her to cheer.

And in the quiet, I let myself believe that loving her like this is enough; that sometimes, the deepest care is simply wishing someone well, and that some hearts are meant to shine even when we can only watch from afar.