Suddenly Summer

The summer heat arrived suddenly and without warning. Seems like just a few weeks ago we were hiding easter eggs for our kids and now we’re fanning our overheated selves, exposed winter white legs glowing below shorts wrinkled from long months in the back of the dresser that holds our summer clothing.

We remark lazily that we should offer passersby the opportunity to purchase sunglasses, lest the sight of our fish belly limbs burn their retinas. But it’s too hot to move from the porch right now. Not that it’s much cooler in the house.

Frozen snow masquerading as impossibly blue sno-cones stain the tongues and t-shirts of our young ones as they hunker down in front of the only fan we own. They idly reminisce of this past winter, just months ago, when pointed icicles broke from the eaves of our house in the middle of the night, crashing down on the hood of the car and nearly scaring us half to death in the process.

The Smurf-tongued youngsters are eventually ushered up the stairs, their whiny lament of “Mom, it’s too hot” buzzing our ears like the mosquitos that arrived with the heat.

Into the bath they go, to wash off the blue. The kids stand, one after the next, clean, wet, suddenly shivering from the clash of air on wet skin. The relief, however temporary, brings on a smile.

Which gives me an idea of what to do with them tomorrow, if this heat holds up.


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249 words

Much of the U.S. is experiencing a heat wave these next few days - to cool off, write a story or poem using these phrases:
pointed icicles
winter white
frozen snow
suddenly shivering
Please bold the phrases. Make NATURE one of your genres