I have fucked my life up and now I’m unemployed, smothering in the high August air of Greensboro, North Carolina. The nearest soul I know is sixty-seven miles away, but they rip ass on the highway here, I can make it under an hour.

I never do. I hate driving in the Carolina heat. Hate seeing people in the Carolina air. Hate being outside in Carolina wet.

The flat tin thud of my mailbox. The postman’s feet I never catch. I open my door. The wind is too thick and heavy to shake the leaves. The blistering wall of late August heat at three in the afternoon feels delicious, like it might fry my damn depression right away. The grass shimmers as it recedes. The hilly neighborhood surrounding the college is empty. They’re repaving all the roads since nobody is around, asphalt sticky in the air. I almost lose an ankle to a newly poured curb.

I crisscross sidewalks, trying to crisp myself. Freckles erupt onto my skin. I don’t break a sweat. Maybe I’m still in my apartment—scrutinizing my mirage—as I am cocooned in sixty-seven degree air, mimicking the Northern California chill of my childhood, steady employment, companionship, dry sobriety. There’s a plastic wicker basket of synthetically-woven blankets for my friends who might shiver.

I take the street where all the walnut trees died of some disease. One day a company came, dug them all up, tilled the soil and never came back. Maybe I am finally unfurling, I dig my toes into the mechanically exposed dirt, I open my jaw wide, rub my arms until the friction burns, let the heat down my throat like molasses. I begin to cook myself, until I can only be caked off the road with a spatula.

I hold eye contact with the sun. Irresistible. Wicked. Dry me, fry me, untie me. I am photosynthetic.

I squeeze my eyes until I only see red. Maybe North Carolina can cure me, after all.

A needling bead of liquid finally curls down my face. A lingering secretion my liver refuses to process. I am not sure who would pry my smelted body free, anyway. There’s not enough sunscreen to burn off everything that torments me today.