Heat

It is hot today. The heat rebounds off the midday asphalt and invades my body like waves of meditation. It seeps into my muscles, slows my breathing, lowers my shoulders.

On days like this my subconscious can remember the steppes of Africa, the savannah of the South — though I've been no such place. It reconnects my fragmented thoughts and makes me thankful for my beating heart, for the sweat that forms on my neck. The heat makes me glad to be awake and glad to be alive.