There is ice cream melting into the cracks of the pavement, and I do not want you to touch me right now.
This is a slowburner.
This is a creeping and crawling thing.
This is horror, and this is grotesque in its most insidious form.
It is discrete and appears shallow.
It is cabin fever: a heavy pressure over your eyebrows, an ache in your neck, a sickness at the base of your larynx.
This is the dishes, the dishes, the dishes.
This is shame/pride/capitalism.
This is rage/apathy/grief.
This is anarchy and non-action.
This is survival.
This is beautiful.
Look at you.
Lately, June has been thinking about ants and trees and mistakes. The size of things. The scales of significance. Matter and the things that do.
Look. Look at these people, being people, look at them go: and what an honour to have known them once and see them now: may we make it through this heat and the sticky months to come. May April turn to June, and June to July, and July to August: may the time pass, and let us pray that we survive. It is summer, and the ants have come out to play. Restless, they turn to June: turn her to chips of loose skin that flake and splinter at her feet. No breeze and still she reaches for it anyway, feeling her crown bleached and hoping this season won’t stunt her growth.
June feels sick: ripe with nausea: she hides behind closed curtains and sits half naked in the dark. It is animal: she feels animal. It turns her feral with snapping jaws. Her eyelids are sweating. Her ovaries are cramping. Tummy ache. Saliva thick in her mouth. She’s trying hard not to think about throwing up because she really thinks she might. But maybe it’s best to just get it over with. Purge the Nausea, that old thing. Apologise to Ettie for the grinding of her teeth when the shakes subside. Feel newborn in the trembling aftermath.
And when the heat finally broke, it soured like a fever.
Days of sweating in stillness made the lower degrees feel like something to shiver over. They switched the fans off: June’s ears were ringing: Everything was so loud it hurt. The sound of people speaking through the open windows of the houses that she walked past. The front doors left open: the car windows left open:
All of the streets: open: quiet and stretching: pavements scorched and fresh cracks filled with abandoned shells and the carcasses of newly dead things.
Everything became louder after that summer. Everything carried with it a strong smell of carrion. Everything risked being hot to the touch. Everything evaded touch.
This was just the calm in the middle of the storm.