It's The Heat

In the upper nineties today and everything is dry as dead bones on the desert floor and we move the sprinkler around from fig tree to fig tree, to mulberry tree to flowers. The babies are gone, the hawk's very life in danger and he doesn't even know that, Mr. Moon's gun is by the door.
No. He will not shoot him. He just really, really wants to.

Hot. Did I say hot yet? When I woke up this morning my hips hurt like old, burn-ache and it took me hours to move it on out and I moved slowly through this hot day and dried the clothes outside-three trips to hang, or maybe four or five, three to bring them all in. This could take all day. Almost did.

So hot. The AC is on and it rattles like huge machine breath, taking in hot hair, breathing out cold.

It feels like sin I can't live without.

I got dressed to go to the store and looked down to see a fat tick stuck to the top of my bosom. How many ticks have I taken off of me this year? Like Owen says, "Two and two." This is the number more than "One and one." The other day when I tried to get him to take a nap he pointed to the clock by the bed and said, "See? Time get up!"He cannot fool me.

Hot. Dry. Ache. A mother chicken screams for her babies. A day where nothing really clicks or falls into place without jiggling and adjusting. Well, except for that.

We slept cool on clean sheets for one hour's nap, got up and moved the sprinklers, got up and made a coffee, got up and this day goes on but my god.

Tomorrow I will take the four ripe avocados I bought today, cut them down the middle, scoop out the green, soft meat, mash it with tomatoes, garlic, cilantro, lime juice. Tomorrow I will squeeze limes and more limes and mix the juice with canned sweetened condensed milk and eggs and make pies. Tomorrow the children will come over and Mr. Moon will cook fish and I will cook okra and tomatoes. We take from every culture- the African, the Conch, the sea, the Mexican, we take and we fix and we will eat and Owen will put the candles in the pie for May and we will light them.
Hot.
We will sing.

Oh. I need to go to the sprinklers on in the garden. The tomatoes refuse to fatten, the beans refuse to swell.

I don't blame them.

It is summer in Florida. It is hot.