This Heat

365 Days of Creativity

one hundred and nine

It's those summer days you've been aching for since the first snow fall. Where it's too hot to move and there's nothing to do, so you sit, trying to prevent your body parts from touching each other. God forbid you make physical contact with another live human and your skin vacuum-seals together like warm glad wrap. I say live human because I actually imagine touching a corpse would be weirdly refreshing. Nice and cold. Stiff too, unlike everything else which gets insanely pliable in the heat. 

You've woken up late because you stayed up later. Relishing the few cool hours before the sun starts rising again. That determined bastard. Just give it a rest for a day, wouldya? Any rain is a blessing in this desert. But the ground seems to show off with how fast it can suck itself dry. Dirty bitch. 

Your skin is tight from mosquito bites and a sun-scorch from the one day you dared venture out.

It was supposed to be fun by the water, but the lake seems a pitiful puddle in this heat. It's a heavy temperature, flaccid and draining. If you could, you'd do a rain dance or a cloud dance or a someone-bring-me-a-cold-beer dance. On second thought dancing would take energy and what little you have is reserved for collecting enough food that day to carry you to the next.

Your days are filled with movie theaters, shopping malls and anything with chilly walls and bottled water. If you're a girl you wonder why you put up with such long hair and if you're a guy you wish shaven bodies weren't so heavily mocked. You watch tv when you're bored though you can't stand it most of the time. Visions of Marineland and Ice Caps and the new Baskin-Robbins flavours dance in your head. Those childhood sugar plums are now dead.

Remembering that childhood, this season never seemed so hot. Why could your tiny body put up with it back then, but your supposed "mature self" is crying out of every pour? Salty, sticky tears. Your entire body like a skittle held in a child's hand for too long. Sweating out your colour and leaving part of yourself behind every time you touch a surface. 

Without air-conditioning, your best friend is your oscillating fan. Every time the boiling air above you is stirred, you smile (inwardly of course, outward emotions are hard) before another layer of hot cotton settles down from an infinite source. 

Fresh out of your forth icy shower you don't even bother with a towel, trying to keep the water on you for as long as possible. Your neighbour makes eye contact with your naked self through the window, but you can't even bring yourself to be ashamed, so you shrug awkwardly and walk away. You live in the thinnest, smallest clothes you own, sometimes opting to simply wear your bed sheet as your wardrobe.

When you do wear clothes, you pour more water in your t-shirt than your mouth and when your friend calls to say "how's it going?" you just laugh weakly. A series of dares challenging each other to cross the outdoor furnace to come visit ensues, knowing perfectly well neither of you will live up to it.

It's like this for days, weeks, months. Until one day a leaf turns yellow then red and falls to the ground and before long it's covered with snow and the air is so cold it hurts to breathe and all you want is a hot summer day with long hours full of short sitcoms and sweat and so much sun you fear the world's going to melt.

This is the season of heat. This is summer.