Heat

There is a silence outside that is palpable: thick and deadening. A solitary cicada stopped rasping several minutes ago and the birds ceased long before that. Nothing is moving out there unless you count the blinding white light that is bouncing from every surface and the heat haze that ripples gently off the baked and bleached soil.

Indoor I can hear the blood pumping in my head and the fluids in my semi-circular canals lurching as I get up from the desk but nothig else. Power was cut, deliberately and possiby on a schedule unannounced, perhaps 40 minutes ago. A mist of sweat covers my forearms and upper lip. My hair is wet. A sweat rash itches at me.

A fly ventures in through the only open shutter. Closed against the heat, we routinely leave one shutter cracked to catch any passing breeze although today it has no work to do, no little air movement to catch and funnel. The tiny, heat exhausted, fly buzzes desultorily before collapsing onto the tiled floor in silence. The silence reigns again.

There is only hot air to breathe and cold water to drink. I sit before a dead computer, both of us completely still, while Gill stands at the table bunching lavender that she picked in the cooler section of the day (82º at 0600 hrs) and that is destined to dry, possibly in record time, on the rack in the bathroom.

And so life goes, on the heatwave days.