salt

the lovely pill i swallow daily to keep my wild brain content to sit still in my skull is salt based. it is the same chemical used to make the blood red showers of fire in fireworks. i like to think about it that way, me and the fireworks, full of this red sparking salt. i keep the salt happy with plenty of water and protein and chocolate and most of the time the salt does what it should, keeps that brain of mine from stomping right out my mouth or hurling itself from an ear. keeps it soothed and cool and tame.

but today the fire escape thermometer is saying ugly things about the air outside and my whole body begins to brace for what will come next. i have seen it looming and i have prepared. the salt is not happy about the heat. i can feel it seething even on days with numbers like 82 and 85 so i have extra bottles of water, a sandalwood fan and a silk fan for unairconditioned classrooms or buses. i have a cold bottle of rosewater to spray on my melting flesh. but the uglier the thermometer talks, the angrier the salt gets. it does not listen to my promises of more water. we are no longer on speaking terms. the salt is a time released pill so there is nothing i can do to tell it to stop stomping around in my body wrecking everything. it is in there. along with the water i offer raspberries. i offer an avocado blended with milk and honey. a cold bean salad with lots of cilantro. anything to make it happy. but i cannot make the outside weather go away. not while i'm at work. we don't have that sort of fanciness in a new york city public school. instead we have bedbugs.

the salt starts to strangle my brain. i can feel it withering in there, gasping for breath, a ropy slug dissolving in all that salt. the fighting gets ugly enough the world starts to swing in wide arcs toward me and then away. there is no way to tell who is winning at this point but i find it difficult to stand up. i regret my decision to wear challenging shoes to keep myself from accidentally walking home in this heat. i cannot walk at all in these shoes, red like the sparking salt.

i wait at the bus stop. the salt has sucked all traces of moisture from my body and left my brain broiling in my skull but my brain makes one last valiant effort. it rallies the troops, urges them to sacrifice themselves for the greater good. my hands, feet and stomach absorb the cruel salt and swell until i look like mickey mouse. my wedding ring slices into my finger. the evil red shoes cut across my toes. the waistband of my skirt cleaves my stomach like a peach. i double over with cramps. this is my rescue, what my damaged brain has come up with. i wait. i know there's more. ah, there. waves of nausea. my cartoon hands begin to shake. the labored breathing i've been working on while waiting for my afternoon bus slows. i am breathing molasses. i am breathing a dishrag full of warm water. i do not want to die on a bus surrounded by teenagers i don't know and a guy drinking from a plastic bag. i will myself to wait until i get home.

i stand there in all 97 nearly liquid degrees and watch four buses go by without stopping. there are blisters already swelling along the leather edges of both shoes. i have walked two blocks and then stood still twenty minutes. by the time the sweetie gets home i am a beached whale on the couch, guzzling pedialyte and emitting a stench i suspect approximates the vapors that leap out of those lakes that kill whole towns. the sweetie is kind. he rubs my back. my feet. he orders food. i continue to swell and swirl and spin.

i wake this morning still spinning, still cramped, still swollen as a parade float. i lie on the bed. the man on the radio is saying words like scorcher in a voice that does not suggest he really understands the nature of the words he's using. the weather website says heat advisory and air quality alert and even record report. i lie on my back and try to look over my stomach to see my sausage toes, to be sure the hideous pressure hasn't turned them blue or made them fall off. i get up and my stomach lurches. the world swings back and forth. there is too much movement from my insides. i chew some tablets to calm my swirling stomach but the salt just laughs. i can feel the tablets losing to the salt, can feel my insides getting chilly, then hot.

it is already 90 degrees when i manage to get myself upright and stuffed into the loosest clothing and shoes i own. i shamble to the market but the constant fighting between the salt and my brain has worn me out. my entrails work hard with my brain to defeat the salt but they are weak and confused. i put food in my basket but can't imagine putting it into my body. it is difficult to walk home with the bag and all that commotion on my insides. i am knocked every which way by the fight going on in there and struggle to get up the stairs with the bag. i am never good at being sick. i am even less good at being mauled by salt.

i do not know what to do. we have this fight every summer and eventually all my insides adjust but the salt seems particularly angry this year. particularly cruel. i consider the food options. i stare a long while at the chocolate bar i brought home. dark chocolate with sea salt. the four block walk home was enough to melt it to the inside of its foil wrapper. when i try to snap off a square, the whole thing bends. it is smooth and soft and the fat and sugar wrap my brain up in happiness right away. my brain stretches, shakes itself. the grains of sea salt dissolve on my tongue and i can hear my brain hum and the medicine salt hums. they are drunks after a bar fight, arms around each other in the broken glass and spilled beer. they do not remember now why they fought and are surprised to see what a wreck they've made of the rest of my insides. still, they are calm now, chuckling softly from time to time. and i will take what i can get. i sip grape pedialyte. i nibble small squares of dark chocolate with tiny crunches of sea salt. i lie under the air conditioner. the sky outside turns dark and the wind bends the trees of heaven just past the window. the rain falls in fat drops onto the fire escape thermometer. it laughs and says seventy eight.