Try to focus
on how free
your toes feel
in your brand new flip-flops
or how cold they don't feel,
like they did last March
or anything else
but the creeping, creeping
heat
that floats upward
from the ground
only to pool
in your head
with no way out,
slow-cooking your brain
and what's left
of the information inside it.

Do you miss
butternut squash soup
and roast vegetables
and crisp apples
and piles of warm
blankets on top
of you, holding the cold
at bay, weighing you down
ever so gently?

You do.
So do we all.

They will be back
before we know it,
before you can say
"Pass the ice, please,"
before before before.

What was it like
before,
when it was cool?

I forget...

xxx
c