It always happens in July. Quietly, almost imperceptibly, as if the air itself were holding its breath. A subtle slackening in the way they move, the way they breathe like something has tilted slightly off-axis. This morning, my father sat at the breakfast table longer than usual, his breath catching faintly at the top of his chest before settling into a slower rhythm. It wasn’t alarming. Not quite. But I noticed. The way one notices a crack in a porcelain bowl they’ve eaten from their entire life not big enough to ruin anything, but enough to change how you hold it. There’s a soft drift of grey in his eyebrows now, like frost that never quite melts. His feet have been aching for months, he doesn’t say it outright, but I see it in the way he eases himself into chairs, the quiet exhale as if gravity were heavier for him than for the rest of us. He pretends not to mind, the way men of his generation always pretend. But he keeps rubbing at his lower back when he thinks no one’s watching, and when he reaches up to adjust the curtain rod, I see the stiffness in his movements. He used to move so effortlessly. Now his body hesitates, just for a moment, before remembering what it’s supposed to do. And my mother. She stood in front of the mirror yesterday, her fingers combing through her hair with a kind of quiet urgency. I caught her studying the corners of her eyes, the places where laughter used to live more easily. There were lines there now, delicate but unmistakable like veins branching out across frosted glass. Once she would’ve massaged her face with a blend of oils in a serum bottle she kept by the sink. Now she doesn't bother. The ritual has fallen away like soo many others. It scares me. It all scares me more than I want to admit. This time of year always does something strange to me. I catch myself looking up vitamin routines and obsessing over articles about aging and diet and longevity; a quiet mania that takes hold around midsummer. I read about antioxidants like they’re gospel. I wonder about cryonics and mitochondrial decay. I joke to friends about time crystals and biological clocks, but I’m not really joking. I would believe in almost anything if it meant I could slow this down even a little. Because what no one tells you when you’re young is that time doesn’t just pass. It thins. It wears away at people slowly, like water through stone. One July turns into another, and the edges of everything soften, the sharpness of their voices, the brightness in their eyes. It isn’t dramatic. It’s barely visible, unless you’re paying attention. And still I feel powerless. All I can do is notice. My noticing feels useless. Every July, I am reminded that time is not kind, not cruel either only indifferent. The telomeres in our cells are snipped one by one by invisible scissors. That’s the real horror of it: no sound, no warning. Just the slow erosion of the people you love most, right in front of you. And yet, they keep laughing. They keep cooking, and reading, and leaving lights on in rooms they forget to return to. Life continues to hum around them, defiantly ordinary. But July comes again, and I watch them more closely than I did in June. I look for signs; small, delicate tremors in the pattern. Not because I want to mourn anything prematurely. But because I want to remember, properly. Because I am afraid. Because I don’t know how many Julys we have left.