52/131: Swelter
Jun. 8th, 2025 01:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphI'm quite sure the Idernet is lying about how sweltery it is around here today. It is saying it is 88 degrees outside, but I believe it to be closer to 200. It's 80 indoors, ffs, and sure to get hotter. But then I'm lying about myself, though in a different sense. I'm lying about because I lack the energy to get up and move around. This will almost certainly be the day on which I finally turn the air conditioner on. I can't take much more of this. This weather is truly fecking awful, and the solstice still lies in the dismal future.
My niece made a quick run to a store for me and picked up some almond flour on sale, paying for it mostly with accumulated bonus points. I should get through the next few days okay, if my milk doesn't go sour. Shopping again on Friday. I hope they've got some good stuff on sale that week. That could save it. The only thing saving this evening is the fact that I don't have to go out in the heat and fetch mail. Sunday has that to recommend it, at least.
Sunday Verse
by Simon Armitage
We went out
into the school yard together, me and the boy
whose name and face
I don’t remember. We were testing the range
of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth.
I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.
He called from over the park—I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,
from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell’s Farm—
I lifted an arm.
He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.
Boy with the name I don’t remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.
My niece made a quick run to a store for me and picked up some almond flour on sale, paying for it mostly with accumulated bonus points. I should get through the next few days okay, if my milk doesn't go sour. Shopping again on Friday. I hope they've got some good stuff on sale that week. That could save it. The only thing saving this evening is the fact that I don't have to go out in the heat and fetch mail. Sunday has that to recommend it, at least.
Sunday Verse
The Shout
by Simon Armitage
We went out
into the school yard together, me and the boy
whose name and face
I don’t remember. We were testing the range
of the human voice:
he had to shout for all he was worth.
I had to raise an arm
from across the divide to signal back
that the sound had carried.
He called from over the park—I lifted an arm.
Out of bounds,
he yelled from the end of the road,
from the foot of the hill,
from beyond the look-out post of Fretwell’s Farm—
I lifted an arm.
He left town, went on to be twenty years dead
with a gunshot hole
in the roof of his mouth, in Western Australia.
Boy with the name I don’t remember,
you can stop shouting now, I can still hear you.
