In the summer, your days and nights are filled with humidity.

It's that wet, sticky kind of heat where the beads of sweat glisten atop your forehead when you try to take a walk. The drops of dew fall blissfully on a foggy morning. Your hair crinkles under the desolate sun. A glass of water slithers down your oily chin.

And in the summer, the bed bugs bite. The air slowly suffocates your lungs as you lie aimlessly in wet grass. Your eyes give off that simple glow and the laughs of youth can be heard throughout the neighborhood.

Your feet become that painstakingly irresistible shade of intrigue. Your life builds without a moment of rest from start to start to finish.

My summers are filled with fried dough overflowing in the shallow paper bowl of Massa as a slight breeze blows powdered cinnamon sugar onto my brand new camera. I watch as alfresco diners with cheeks flushed in a perfect peachy pattern hold hands underneath green umbrellas and I imagine a quieter existence.

Life is more difficult in the winter. Life is especially difficult in Chicago in the winter.

"You know, we won't see the ground again until March," my mother exclaimed while riding in her car.

"Yeah," I said with a heavy sigh.

I love snow and cold. I love oversized sweaters and knee-high beige boots and cups of hot chocolate. I like the holidays.

But December ends, and in Chicago, winter lives on. In the winter, my heart years for the freedom of a new summer.