A Chill In the Heat

I’ve caught some sort of chill on my journey. The sound in my ears grows more muffled by the days and I cough deeply in the evening. I suppose one shouldn’t be surprised to catch a neighbor’s ailment in such tight quarters. I do not know how many problems air carriers might create, but I trust this condition will not cause me trouble for long.

But I am nervous of the heat. It has been beyond something serious here in the weeks before I arrived. The citizens say in the month of August, things will be much worse. The stone and iron of the city will absorb every degree of the sun, and everyone will sweat as they have today. I am not used these thick breaths; I do not know how I will deal with August.

In the evening, the air cools, but it grows heavy from the sea. There is rarely a breeze. Where I once lived, it grew wet in the morning. The grasses would sag with the drops of dew. In the afternoons, the grasses would run up the fields in waves with the wind. They would blow right through the nearby farms, waves cascading over each other for miles. But there are no fields here; there are just buildings that reach higher for the sun.

All things as they are, I’m optimistic my condition will improve.