(64) Heat

Summer in the Deathcrack has reached a moderate broil. This is less awful than the default summer temp, which is an unwavering seventh degree burn. You might not have heard of the seventh degree burn; it often goes by unrecognized and involves the thorough scalding of your actual soul. It occurs after a variety of seasons that tease your poor, forcibly exposed, insides into a flayed pile ripe for the searing. It’s a weird temperature to endure for more than a few seconds; most sane people will pack right up and move the fuck out. Because, rational. We are still living here.

The first few days of sous vide existence sneak into your habits like a cat at the back door. You are diligent about your schedule, gathering your tank tops and capris into an easy heap by your dresser so dressing doesn’t make you slip into sweaty reality. You are slow waltzing through your days when your first slip happens. It’s three in the afternoon, and you are at home, staring at the coffee table. You reminded yourself that morning that today’s schedule was different; students are switching to summer time and this afternoon will roll a little lopsided. You are staring at the table, almost relaxed, when you realize three pm is someone’s lesson time and you are not there and the schedule change was for last week; it happened already and you fucked up.

You message the family frantically and are told within minutes that they, too, have no idea what day it is, and they are at a water park. So, everyone has fucked up at this point, but no worries; it’s one mess up, and no one is pissed. The days waltz on, still slowly, and eventually the rhythm stilts to the point of Viennese charade. You have forgotten things, and so has everyone, and it’s hard to move because the air is a tangible film of salty paste over your every movement. You drink water and eat less and try not to think about your nerve endings cussing you out every time you move. You assign yourself tasks summer-style: they have single steps, and if they involve leaving the house, you make sure the task involves getting paid or driving to the beach.

By the time it is mid-moderate broil, function is built on denial. Time is exactly the same, but the cloying misery stifling every pore has rendered connection to it all but immaterial. Stillness is survival.

I’ve always grimaced at the phrase, ‘take the heat’. What alternatives are there? If my natural instinct for coping with heat is to slow down and breathe a little more deliberately, then doing well in the heat isn’t going to be about taking it. It will be about letting it exist without needing to conquer it. That said, off I go for a run. It’s a double bonus, see, because my soul will sprinkle out my pores as I go, leaving me blissfully empty while it waters the grass.