It's So Hot/All Over the World/My Sneakers Are Sinking/Right Into the Asphalt

The heat scrambles my brain and steals my sleep. Once an hour, the long naked overnight wakes me up with a chest shrinking into itself, a thousand malicious pounds squeezing against my lungs. "Fuck!" I shout, and throw my pillow over my head with both hands and off of the foot of the bed. I stand up, stumble into the bathroom, my nose clogged with humid snot and breathing weakly through my mouth, the bedroom is an oven, the hallway is an oven, the bathroom is a fucking accusation, I bend over weakly and stick my head under the bath tub faucet and turn on the cold water as high as it will go, leaning my hands against the slimy tile, unable to tell if the dizzy nausea is from the heat or the drunkenness or both, and I'm furious, just furious, the humid drunk heat is furious. I stomp back naked through the hallway, a goddamn hate dragon dripping water trails and flop down on my bed, unsure if sleep will ever be possible again until I wake up half an hour later, cursing, the sheets wet not with cold water but with sweat, fucking sweat, I'm dehydrating in my sleep, the fan pointed straight at my face offers no relief, just stuffs up my disgusting nose, so that I wake up panting, cursing, useless with anger and contrition.

And no matter how much you shower the headlines smell like sweat, and the city streets are shell-shocked, and watching their faces as they enter the air conditioning is all the proof you need of evolution--from chimp to man in 1 second flat--and I stomp naked through the hallway, more asleep than awake, my balls hanging vulgar and useless, lukewarm water dripping off them, water that rolls down from my face picking up sweat and grime and disgust and by the time it splashes onto the floor it's just a puddle of sleepless salt water that can't even evaporate right into the humid night air.