This post originally appeared in September of 2020.
It was so hot today
that when I stepped from shade into sun
I melted
Birds came and drank me
and butterflies and wasps licked the deltas of
my once-wrists
and they flew me across the sky
and they pooped me down upon the ponderosas
and the cliffs.
It was so hot today
that when I melted
I boiled
and rose as steam
and joined 100 thunderheads galloping east
over the far mountains
It was so hot today
that when I struck the ground as lightning
I became a fire
and devoured a forest
and a prairie
and a dozen houses
and turned the light to copper
and the sun to blood
with my smoke
and when every drop of me was gone
the earth where I had puddled cracked—a dry lakebed
in the shape of my body.
The dust I left
colored the wind
until it scoured me down
to the bone of bedrock
and ran clear again.
Original artwork by the author
Thanks for posting this poem again, Sarah!
When we experience hot, hot days where I live, I often stand in my kitchen, and imagine, oh, I’m just doing the dishes on Venus. I’m rotating clockwise, as she does. And it’s hot enough to melt lead. While I rinse a plate with dinosaurs running around the rim, she belches gas and sweat drips down the small of my back.
Not everyone is soothed by thoughts of their own oblivion.
This should be a book!
Love the poem. I live in Qatar where the current temperature is a relatively low 42º. According to my weather app there is ZERO chance of rain for at least the next ten days and the UV Index is at an extreme (Spinal tap) ’11’.
I know all about melting and I long to see birds around puddles that can then be ‘pooped on ponderosas’.
Very nice indeed. Wonderful and witty images.