Heatstroke Elegy

Everything just turns to soup in this Sacramento heat.

I raise an important finger only to watch it slide back

down. “What did you say, honey?” I say, thinking we’re finally

getting somewhere. “You look so nice in your snorkel,” I add.

“I just can’t keep track of myself anymore, I’m falling apart,”

she says, her nose sliding to the floor. “I too feel disarranged,”

I say as my earlobes sink in between the couch cushions.

“Do you think it’s us, or something that’s happened to us?”

she says. “Oh, I like the idea, but I think it’ll take much too

long to get there on bikes.” “How could this have happened?

We used to make love for hours!” she says. “Glowing sparks

shot from the clinking together of our jagged hearts, but our hearts

are softer, floppier now than they’ve ever been.” “Yeah,” I say.

“I wish we hadn’t gotten your sister that vibrator for Christmas.

She thought it was a cruel joke and you know she’ll never find anyone.”

“We’ve just been drifting apart for so long,” she sighs as the day’s slow

descent begins its climax, her breasts long, blaring headlights that miss

me by inches. We careen like falling towers toward the floor.

“Our arterial ghosts have ordered cases of oil and matches for the pelvis

of eternal disco,” I say, unable to feel my tongue. My fingers feel like

wet torches knotted into locks of long hair. “The human brain,” she cried

“shaken, scorched and boiled in its own juices can last four thousand years!

Can the same be said of our love? How do we regain our spark

without thoroughly calcifying ourselves?” “Did you paint your toenails?”

I ask. “And I just wanted to say,” she says “that I think you were right

when you said that deconstructing the mystery makes it more difficult

to live by.” “We don’t even have any jumbo shrimp!” I scream into

the new, liquid void.

Nick Minges has a bachelor's degree in English from Sacramento State. In the fall, he will be entering the MFA program at UC Davis. His work has been published in Coffin Bell and The Bat City Review. He reads and copy-edits for Levee Magazine.