How Can I Hate You If You're Me?

This kind of scorching heat is familiar to someone who grew up in the desert, but there's something off about the light. The sharp outlines that should surround every object, every shadow, the borders that should separate everything from everything else are all muted and blurred in the humidity.

I walk down the street, letting the sun bake me, but my enjoyment of the moment is bittersweet. Where the heat should be drying me out and turning me into the hardline desert fanatic of my youth, it simply melts everything into a puddle, an undifferentiated mass of messy contradictions and sweat and other people who are too much like me to hate.