This is the part of summer in which you come to believe the earth has stopped turning. It took long enough, billions of years of revolving, a time scale so vast that the year, as a unit of measurement, seems presumptuous, like telling the Queen of England to step up to the yardstick before she can ride the throne.
But it's happened at long last, in just these past few weeks, the ancient gyre of our planet shuddering to a stop, heat like a record stuck in its groove.
We go out walking, my son and my daughter and I. Sweat gilds us, dampens our clothes, makes laundry piles bloom. My daughter in her moist onesie probably shouldn't be out in this weather; we take her anyway, and the heat swaddles her to sleep. My son complains, but desultorily; he's still the age at which it feels so good to move, all other considerations are chimeric, dissolving as he strides.
We seek shade. Shade is our drug, our sweet, sweet high. We crisscross the street for it, changing our route. New to eternity, the sun is not kind. It dogs us through the neighborhood. It barks and bites.
September: the whole world holding its breath.
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