Austin summer fever dream

106 degrees feels like home, if home is a weighted blanket that I can’t kick my feet out from under. The oppressive heat is electric and it coats me in its warmth ‘til I feel like I’m riding on the hot air, drifting through the city on a sweet breeze. There’s always a line of sweat rolling down my thigh, making a sharp turn at the 3 mosquito bites dotting my ankle, that I paw at until they bleed. I’m driving with the windows down and the AC on full blast, listening to something romantic. Indoors, I’m frozen to my core, but back outside like a lizard on a leaf I perch on the ledge of a building and defrost down to the bone, my thighs burning from the contact. I’ll always opt to take a walk to get a hot coffee on a hotter day. At the gym, my shorts and tank-top turn two shades darker from sweat as I walk barefoot across the turf. I stand in front of the big fan between sets, groaning, drinking in the cold air. At the parks, I run and laugh in the sun with my pup, both of us overcome by childlike ecstasy, barefoot, dodging dog shit and picnickers. Maybe I’ll dance an ecstatic silent disco too, with downtown as my backdrop. Nothing stops me in my tracks like the sun making its way to bed over the cityscape, lighting the glass skyline on fire with a purple halo. I’ll soak my tanned body in cool water, gasping for breath as my head bobs out of Barton Springs, my hair matted across my forehead. My skin is stickyplump from humidity, I clap for the tricksters at the diving board, the bands at ACL a soundtrack with the setting sun. There’s a friend to meet everywhere I go. We draw tarot cards in the grass, and I zoom to Thai Fresh after, trying to make it before they close because it’s light out ‘til way past closing time. Sitting by the window, with my head buried in a novel while I slurp down my noodles and grab a dessert to go. 8:45PM, as I’m meandering back home, the sun is still ablaze in the sky, because the sun doesn’t set on Austin.