Heat

Summer is in earnest, now, building swiftly to the crescendo of Solstice. The heat is intense, baking the stones, bringing lizards out to bask for brief moments before they scurry into the closest patch of shade, hoping to go unnoticed by the local cats.

When I chance to go outside during the day, I feel my skin tighten, reminded of long-ago burns that peeled away and left me tan and new in a few days. Sweat prickles my scalp, gathers, rolls down my back, sides, even legs, doing little to cool me as the sun, relentless, beats on.

I want a sprinkler to run through, water chilled during its underground journey to my pipes, little droplets sending shivers right through me as I dance through rainbows in the spray.

I don't tolerate heat well. Oh, I endure, but enjoy? No...not often, anyway. Sometimes, the heat is a pleasure, baking my bones, melting my flesh, releasing my spirit to ride the shimmering waves to other places in thought, other places in time. For the most part though, I hug the coolth of the air-conditioned house and wait for evening, for the heat to break and flee the coming dark, before I brave the outdoors again.