It Was So Hot

|

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

4 thoughts on “It Was So Hot

  1. 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.

  2. 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’.

Comments are closed.

Categorized in: Climate, Earth, Miscellaneous, Sarah, Sarah's Art