As Hot As It Was, You Ought To Thank Me

Night felt like something heavy melting over us, like if the black sky could melt like wax and coat the world in hot darkness. Sometimes you thought you couldn't breathe. You thought you were under water at Cherry Lake, had been there too long, forgotten to come up for air, won the holding-your-breath contest and lost your life. You kicked the wet sheets off you, like unpeeling a cotton skin, and lay in a puddle of sweat that felt like if you'd been shot and maybe were bleeding do death.


Words are funny, the way they come at your full force, then just bounce right off you like bullets off the side of a steel barn. I saw the force of them, but they just slapped up against me and bounced away. Words need a place to enter. A lot of people think you got to let words in through your ears, but that's not so. Words can get in other ways - harder ways. They can come in through your open eyes. You can breathe them in. They can work their way through your sweaty skin like ringworms do. They can enter a wound you are trying to heal up. They can just sit on you like a tick you didn't know was there, attach themselves to you and sort of suck their way in.

Once words are spoken, then there they are. They don't just vanish into thin air like some people think. They don't just disappear. They are like parasites that become part of some larger organism, like a small idea that hooks into all your bigger ideas. Words are as real as anything, which is why speaking lies is so dangerous.



Why are people always so interested in messing up love? Their own love, other people's love. It's like people can't stand anybody to really love something - especially another person. They want to provide you all the reasons why maybe you shouldn't, they want to warn you, try to talk you out of it. To ruin it any way they could.