Yalini

Embracing Summer Slowness in the South Aegean

My sixth summer living in Greece is also my last as a permanent resident. Three poems on heat, salt water, slowness, and the Aegean as ancestral medicine…because sometimes the body knows what it needs before the mind catches up.  (originally published on Substack August, 2026)

I used to long for the Greek summer all year, desperate for the heat, the sun, the sea, and the sound of cicadas that preceded the evening buzzing of mosquitos in my ear. The mosquitos were part of the package, and the good outweighed the bad. When I moved here, the thing I looked forward to most was a freddo and a beach day, but in recent years the way I approach summer has transformed along with my body. Now it is a time for slowing down and allowing things to move slowly. The heat slows me down like molasses. Here on Rhodes (Ρόδος), with temperatures in the high 20s to mid 30s ºC (that’s 80s to 90s ºF) and 60-80% humidity from June through September, functioning normally is out of the question. I’ve got fibromyalgia and that is not easy in extreme temperatures. All symptoms — fatigue, brain fog, and pain — become more severe. I am indoors, air-con on constantly, hiding in the dark due to overstimulation from the light and the heat. These are days of kindness and self nurturing. My writing reflects this.

While I focus on healthy seasonal produce, hydration, and connection to the body, I am also in a state of quiet creation; it’s a sort of incubation period where the fruit is on the vine and slowly sweetening, much like the figs which will be at their tastiest in late July into August. My ideas are also slowly ripening in the dark, with calm music. I connect to my body, and this is where inspiration sits. This is the space of stillness where the muses work through me, and where ideas gestate into something to come.

But summer is also beach, saltwater, cicadas, and the sweet smell of hot earth where olive and fig grow. The winds coming off the Aegean, the smell of salted water fills your nostrils mixed with the sweet warm scent of Mediterranean foliage and earth, reminding me where I am rooted. Stone fruits shared, the laughter of families and friends enjoying the sea, people gathered outdoors to cool down in the evenings. This is what the ancestors have always known, what I am learning to reclaim by slowing down and noticing. Rooting into the season and the place is a way of connecting to my Hellenic heritage, to my body, and to the land.

Embodied practice requires connection; connection requires slowness — to allow the senses to notice. The Greek word for body, σώμα, has been adopted into many fields like somatic practice, philosophy and psychology, as soma. In this moment, my soma requires slowness.

As I write from the island of Rhodes in the South Aegean, in my sixth and final Greek summer as a permanent resident, this is offered both as a love letter and a lament.  A love letter to the land that has held and healed me. A lament at what I will lose when I leave again. 

yalini

a crust on my skin

itch all over

the salt of the sea

dried after swimming

in the waters

of the Aegean

my ancestors felt it too

sealing the therapy

under blue skies

of blue waters

we call this blue, yalazio

the word for calm, yalini

salt of blue waters

healing generations

across time

yalazio brings yalini

chariots

Apollo’s chariot

across the sky

as sunset brings

more colours

above our heads

in pinks

purples oranges

and golden hues

the sun’s final

burst of light

as it falls behind

the mountains

giving way

to Selene’s chariot

welcoming tomorrow

with gratitude

ripening

the fruit is ripening

slowly you can

smell its sweetness

as you pass by

smells telling you

it is time

to taste its beauty

but before this

a flower must

become a seed

a seed must

be buried

watered, fed

from the darkness

become a network

roots must sprout

a tiny being

become a tree

or a bush will grow

then the fruit comes

patience, your scent

will become sweet too

when it is your time

to fruit

(originally published on Substack August, 2026)

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