the heat

sagaponack NY in august




no one even wears clothes anymore and this heat is still melting people and the sidewalks are all sticky with it and the air is thick with it so much that they issued an air quality alert telling us well okay we know you have to breathe but it's bad to breathe right now so maybe just stay inside or something,
and we do and we pull the blinds and drink jars of water and eat bowls of fruit and sit as still as possible but then the white noise of the heat gets to be too much in all that stillness
and even in the night it doesn't let up because the buildings and the concrete saved it, and the heat just hangs as if it was heavier than the air above it
but since it's not, you know that it's just heat all the way up to heaven and god

and in the nights we convene in little basements stupidly windowless trying to hear some music to drown out the heat noise
but since we're all melting and can feel the little rivulets of sweat down our sides and are almost blinded by the shine of lights from the droplets of sweat falling off our chins
we all leave and sit on the curbs of the gas stations drinking 99 cent cans of arizona iced tea as brooklyn literally dies all around us

and then i smile to myself and think
no matter how far i travel
there will never be a summer where i will avoid hanging out on the curbs of gas stations