Swelter.

The world is in slow-motion. It's like being submerged- I can feel the damp tendrils of hair snaking their way down my neck, trying to find a reprieve. Sweat pools in every concievable place. Inconceivable places. The air is gelatinous. I just want to escape.
I fan myself with ratty, dog-eared books piled up beside the bed. I sweep my fingers across salty skin, trying in vain, to absorb the liquid heat.
Flowers wilt. Posters peel. Feet expand.
My skin is soggy. All the water in the world has been dragged through hell and left hanging in the air- shimmering and damp. It clings to everything.

_____

I wake, wondering when we got a waterbed. I wonder why the water bed is leaking.
The darkness has disoriented me. I am scorched and thirsty. I must have become a vampire. This heat is not humanly possible.
Everything smells like salt and skin.
Sitting up, I run my thumb across your brow, your lip, your collar-bone. You are still there, hidden beneath a blanket of Summer.
Damn Summer. When will this ease up? Nights are meant to be cool, I want to be tangled up in you, but this heat makes me irritable. Some twisted part of my brain must tell me that being a bitch will lessen the invisible flames that are eating me alive. But nothing helps.
I'm prickly and hot and I'm sorry.

_____

That Star- Ted Hughes

That star
Will blow your hand off

That star
Will scramble your brains and your nerves

That star
Will frazzle your skin off

That star
Will turn everybody yellow and stinking

That star
Will scorch everythig dead fumed to its blueprint

That star
Will make the earth melt

That star. . .and so on.

And they surround us. And far into infinity.
These are the armies of the night.
There is no escape.
Not one of them is good, or friendly, or corruptible.

One chance remains: KEEP ON DIGGING THAT HOLE

KEEP ON DIGGING AWAY AT THAT HOLE.