It is night now. The animals all slumber as if there is nothing in this world to worry them.
My skin is radiant, not with light but with heat.
The breeze across my skin in the midsummer night is a cool wet cloth on a fever.
A velvet touch.
Succulent; driving sensation out of the desert and across the skin wrapping of my living body.
The breeze at night unsettles the silence of the animals breathing in their sleep; scratching then settling again.
My body shifts to better drink from the soothing cup of breeze. Because the radiance, the fiery, the glow is its pressing condition and sleep eludes me.
I forgot to apply sunscreen today, a midsummers day, and so the sun had its way with me and now is taking its sweet time to sally forth from the temple that is my skin. It was never truly confined there, rather its departure is more of a languish as it gradually dissipates to mount the blessed chariot of wind and ride it breathing back out through the open windows.
But I didn’t really forget to wear sunscreen.
No, I just still don’t get why I must do so because I’ve always found the sun to be so beautiful. I won’t believe I need protection from something I so deeply revere. A song to god: the light of life itself. How can this radiance = death?
Then the dawn comes on like the overture to a great symphony one will never tire of hearing. My awe is undiminished.
Originally published February 15, 2013
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