Dog Days - Jeff Thomas

Suffocating. Like the humid heat of August. The crushing weight of an open expanse of time. Energy dissipates and you’re left lying on the couch. Ideas float through your head like little exciting offers of salvation. Fantasies of direction and purpose, smiles of divine and self-satisfied actualization. You bring them to your body and watch them freeze in your breast. The tips of your fingers tingle but don’t move. A depressive front washes over you and this moment looks just like eternity. Feebly you flick the next logical switch: If someone would just tell you what to do, pick you up and carry you, you would indeed be saved. And in that instant, you find rage, violently destroying around you the horrifying structure of someone else. Feet kicking franticly at supporting frames, fingers clawing bloodily at oppressive thatch, lungs gasping for a fresh breath of independence. A few moments of rasping desperation, followed by the creeping quiet of inertia. The heat, overpowering, drenches you in sweat. But somehow, slowly, you manage to get up and water the plants.