Summers so hot you, like Dante, can have a fever dream about the pits of hell and wake up, afraid that it’s come to meet you, risen up like a mirage, boiling everything in its shimmer. Humidity and its haze so heavy that it looks like wildfire, but the only smell comes from the damp morning ground. It bakes off so quickly in the sun you can almost hear the crickets and birds sigh in the dense air, restless until the sun begins to set again.
An oven with no circulation, door sealed and bolted shut. Leaves and men wilting under the burden of it, the body expelling water faster than it can be replaced. Sweat taking the life force with it, one drop at a time. A thousand miniscule payments on the daily loan for life. It rolls down the nose and forehead and temples, falling, but can hardly evaporate because the air is already inundated. The sun’s persistence could very well last forever. Everything a toil. Getting the mail is digging a ditch. Walking the dog is forging steel in a mill. It’s best to resign yourself to the state. Avoid the urge to drown yourself in a shallow ditch puddle for the moment of relief. De Leon must have been a superhuman demigod for enduring Florida summers. Chain mail, armor, helmets, wool clothes. Zeal despite the heat that doesn’t even exist within high-paying blue collar jobs. Even the buzzards look for respite among the pines and powerlines, hoping some poor bastard will succumb to the temperatures beneath them. Only reptiles making the most of the day.
But the interminable hell finds an end when clouds roll in, low and fast. The sun takes no pause as they drain fat drops by the bucket. The dry and cracked soil has no time to absorb it. Roadsides become small rivers, parking lots are now kiddie pools. Anyone working outside hardly takes notice, having traded one soak for another of a different kind. And it’s gone as fast as it came. Asphalt begins to steam and manages to make the air even heavier. The earthworms escaping the deluge find themselves on baking concrete by the hundreds, dying and turning crisp anyhow.
Some water will remain, adding to tomorrow’s weight. The grass will grow a foot taller overnight, roots penetrating even further, ready to make the most of tomorrow’s shower.
People don't believe me when I say the thunderstorms in Florida are just different.