Fly Lips

Why does everything I write end up like this?

The room is hot and the summer just keeps seeping in.  Windows and walls do little to keep it out. The fan across the room whirrs and clicks, trying it’s best to sweep away the heat. It does little but push it around.

I’m reading something. Something with yellowed pages and words I forget as soon as I’ve read them. Beads of sweat run through my hair and soak into the worn-through fabric of the sofa I’m stretched out on. My shorts stick to my legs when my legs aren’t too busy sticking to eachother and the boy-sized shirt I’m wearing keeps bunching uncomfortably around my waist.

A fly lands on the heel of my foot and wanders delicately, softly, over my skin. I don’t shoo it away as it crawls up my leg. It tickles like a promise, like the shadows of finger tips. My knee twitches involuntarily and the insect is startled into lazy flight. I watch it slowly circling untill it lands on my disgarded soda can to drink the sugar drops left along the lips. For that’s probably what brought it here in the first place. Not sticky, sweat-stained skin.

I sigh and fan myself with the musty pages of my book. I’m feeling dazed, or lazy or some other word I can’t be bothered to hunt for right now. My mind just drags over thoughts, not really paying attention. It keeps tripping over a phrase, sort of like a mantra really. Words that have stopped having any meaning for me.

“I love you.” I whisper it out loud and roll my eyes at the way it tastes in my mouth. It sounds awkward and stupid, kind of like when a person swears for the first time. I press the heels of my hands into my eyelids and cringe as I think about someone listening to me say it.  Well, not someone, you, mostly.

It seems so weird to me that I can picture us together, naked, pulsing, entwined and it barely makes me blush but picturing me telling you those words and  I could melt ice with my cheeks. Not that the likelihood of one happening is any better than the other.

I have to stop thinking about this. A distant rumble in the distance, a result of late afternoon heat lighting, helps me take my mind elsewhere. I wonder if it will rain, maybe cool off a bit tonight. Lord knows the grass could use it. Your eyes. I’d have to close all the windows though and that would make the heat in the house worse.  The sound of your laugh. I could always move the fan up to my bedroom I suppose. The feel of your fingers accidently brushing against mine. Or just wet a wash cloth with cold water for my forehead. The way you stick your tongue out the corner of your mouth when you concentrate really hard-

D****t.

I sweep a hand through the air in half-frustration. The fly, still drinking from my soda can is disturbed from the sudden shifting air. I’m still as it buzzes around my ears before landing somewhere on my chin. I close my eyes and hold my breathe as it crawls over to inspect my badly-chapped lips. It tickles like a kiss I’ve never had, like someone, you, your lips, trembling against mine. I exhale at the thought of you and the fly buzzes away in annoyance to circle the room.

I lick at the salt of my dry lips sadly and lift my wheathered book back up to my face.

It is just way too hot today.