…my memories from years ago, living in the Ohio River Valley…
F inding it best to breathe more slowly in this August heat, I inhale haltingly. I can almost feel my nostrils singed by scalded air, nearly too hot and thick to breathe. The heat is suffocating. In my need for oxygen, I cautiously fill my lunges, baking them with each sustaining breath. This broiling oven is difficult to endure.
My skin weeps, ablaze in this inferno. I feel salted droplets baste my neck, trace their way irritatingly down my spine, to puddle in the small of my back, saturating the waistband of my running shorts. They collect in the hollow of my chest, hesitant in its fire breathing. Infuriatingly, they soak my shirt.
Annoying beads of sweat, bloom and seep, from beneath the smother of hair, now just a matted soak atop my head. They ooze their way, down the fevered slope of my forehead, into my eyes — and sting! Endeavoring to transform my beard into a salty bog, they cling bitter in my mustache, impossible not to taste.
Be damned you glaring sphere! You crackle in this steaming sky, bearing down rude and relentless, heartlessly imposing, sapping my energy. Nothing will be accomplished this day, my motivation is expired. Exhaustion permeates this humid midday. My thoughts feel sticky, my synapses overheated. Can I last until the quenching Autumn rain? Questions evaporate in this blistering August heat, desires vaporize, even dreams are scorched!
simmering here in august
even my mind sweats
*
rob kistner © 2021
Poetry at: dVerse