*Press play on this video as you read. Trust me.

With the warmer weather approaching, it’s time for me and my kind to go into hibernation. You know, us melatonin-deprived, bread-dough people made from leftover envelope glue. We are the blinding legs of fathers in shorts at Disneyland. Us descendants of Irish immigrant dreams can’t survive out here with you kayaking, sun-kissed, athletic goddesses. We are made for Renaissance paintings and splashes of brightly colored hipster sparrow tattoos on our collarbones, for 3:47am internet searches about how many toes does a sloth have and hissing in the dark as someone opens a window shade before 9pm. As Ghosts of Christmas Past we long for sunlight but know it is a one-sided love. We are pale Hades covered in Coppertone and you are Persephone, dewey with sweat that doesn’t smell and we lust for you to love us. And yet you will not. You scorch us and scald us and leave melanoma on our outer left forearms in your Vitamin D infused wake. We apply an onion’s worth of sunscreen layers and still you refuse to let us be in live action mountain-climbing ads for Viagra. We are the pasty legion on the beach covered from toe to fingertip and your great-aunt’s floppy straw hat that has seen too many vampire books come and go. We are those that do go quietly into that good night because the day is a living hell at 74 degrees. We are oozing our sunburned, lobster-red meat sacks into a pool made only of aloe vera and sweet tea and it feels like heaven. Go have your Victoria’s Secret Pink tunics and Tevas and hikes up Laurel Canyon. You’ll see us in a couple of months, when the crisp leaves fall and the great Ugg Boot in the sky is in retrograde. When we unfurl our receipt paper limbs into leggings and boots and thigh-high socks and emerge at full strength, powered by Pumpkin Spice and our cold, Voldemort hearts wrapped in scarves filched from a Forever 21 Power Sale. But until then, enjoy the warmer weather, you beautiful tan manatees. Don’t take your powers for granted. We’ll be watching you from our iPhone-powered drones and weeping orange spray tan tears into our hordes of inspirational quote Etsy mugs as we whisper to ourselves, “the dark never bothered me anyways.”

*I wrote this for my “Writing for Late Night TV” class at Second City; we learn about different bits and styles for late night hosts such as Colbert, Conan, Fallon, et al. This week we were working on rants, where the host goes off on a 1-4 minute diatribe. My vision for this was Colbert shaking his fist at warmer weather and how us alabaster souls long for it and yet cringe from it.

*I also recognize how ridiculous it is to be a crybaby about being “too white” when cultural norms in certain parts of the world falsely goad people into skin-whitening creams in order to be attractive, or place higher safety or value on lighter skin.

*Written indoors on a sunny day by me, a professional vampire.