The Hottest Days of the Year

I met you last year, but I didn't know you until August, that blazing month of dog days, hotter than a desert sun, when sheer madness call people from the woodwork. And so you were called to me, on a particularly irritating afternoon, during the hottest days of the year. And you sat across from me, your T-shirt stuck to your back like wallpaper. Our tired eyes met each others, and, looking beyond the irises, I discovered something different, something I did not look deep enough to find in June. It's funny how our exteriors can be so unlike our interiors, like when you shatter a rock with a hammer, and learn there's a sparking geode inside. I am the hammer. The light of the thousand degree sun, shown on your head in a new way. It had sucked the moisture out of the veneer that covered you, baked and dried that facade like paint. And it chipped off in little but prominent pieces, and there you were, changed and new, resting before me. For months I had looked at you, but on that crazy scorching afternoon I saw you. For the first time I saw your true self, beyond the mask you put on for others. Please tell me this is true, what I see with my eyes, what I feel with my soul. Or is the sun playing a cruel trick on my eyes, sickening my vision, and creating a mirage, on these, the hottest days or the year? Written November 11th, 2001 © on Nov 11 2001 01:41 PM PST   0 • 8