Cloudless Nebraska

That summer our house was so humid that my sisters and I
ran around unashamedly in our bras and underwear,
our skin sticky from the languid air trapped inside dirty walls.
We fought over box fans and who slept in the basement, although
it wasn’t much cooler sleeping on the canvas couch that scratched
at our skin like the overgrown grass consuming our front lawn.
We’d try to escape the confines of rooms that smelled of wet dog—
long ago those same rooms used to smell of apples and Christmas—
by worshipping the sun, palms behind us as we lay prostrate
on the rough driveway, sweat trickling down our hairlines to our tongues.
We’d sip lemonade through bendy straws and squeeze the leftover
fruit into our hair, washing the seeds out with the old hose whose
rusty nozzle spat liquid iron onto the patchy grass.
I wonder how we looked to cars passing by us while we danced
in the heat, laughing as we tried to fry eggs on the pavement.