Outdoor exercise
We decided to go swimming.
Last day of summer! Let’s take advantage of this heat, we said.
So we went to the lake.
Nobody was in the water.
It was a cesspool.
Fluffy brown-streaked foam collected at the shore
Four feet wide.
As if the lake was a giant boiling cauldron of broth
But someone had neglected to skim the gathering proteins off the surface.
Or maybe the sand decided to have a shampoo
But passed out from the heat
Before it finished rinsing.
The lap lane ropes
Normally cordoning off the deepest area
Had desperately pulled themselves from their tethers
And morphed from a 50 yard rectangle
Into a pathetic oblong.
Even out deep,
The water was soggily crusted with dead insects, pollen,
And gray mysteries.
We looked at it
While summer’s warmth punched us repeatedly in the back of the head.
We decided to run instead.
We walked
We ran
We sweated.
The sun soldered our clothes to our skin.
The humidity held its slimy palms
Over our noses and mouths
As we miserably carried it
On an endless, sweaty piggyback ride.
Our reward, we decided,
Was an ice cream treat.
It melted so fast
We had to drink the last of it.
Sayonara, summer
You had your last hurrah
And my god
We’re ready for fall now.
Fresh Hell 
LOL This captures yesterday so perfectly! I love it all. The humidity description is so spot on. It was like a miserable piggyback ride, as we suffocated under its slimy wet grip around our faces hahaha. Ready for Fall indeed!
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Thank GOD summer is over! I heard about the harmful algal bloom but your description just made me grimace! 😀
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Oh, was it harmful? I’m glad we didn’t decide to brave it, haha. Gross…
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You made me appreciate our lovely surf coast beaches.
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A nice fresh beach would be lovely right about now. It’s been so humid the last couple of days, I’ve been irrationally grouchy!
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You brought back memories – not so fond memories – of the Illinois humidity I grew up in. The lake scene made me want to retch, though. But I love the way the whole poem works to make you appreciate fall.
Our heat wave (hottest September on record now) is over. It broke yesterday.
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Haha, every word was true (one lie: only Hannah’s ice cream melted, I ate mine so fast, heh). It was a really disgusting day!
Did you not like Illinois? Most of the time I like Missouri but ugh, there were two days in a row there where I wasn’t feeling great and could not handle the sudden humid wave!
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The sun felt closer than ever, and the air wetter than ever. It really was a couple miserable days. I’m used to heat and humidity but those days were exceptional! I still remember how my face skin felt like it was burning off during that run hahaha
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So it wasn’t just me!
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I liked Illinois, but not the humidity. The East is as beautiful as the West in my book. Just a different kind of beauty.
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