My Life In a Toaster Oven
by Catharine J Anderson
You turn the knob, open the door, and the heat hits your face before your foot even hits the porch.
It is the same feeling as leaning over an oven to check a tray, except it is two in the afternoon, another record high, like every other day this week.
Walking across the yard, the grass does not bend under your boots. It snaps like dry straw. The city sent out a notice weeks ago telling everyone to save water. No car washing, no filling pools, and forget about lawn sprinklers. For the first time ever, the HOA board had to shut their mouths and swallow it. Nobody is getting fined for brown grass this year.
Instead, we open the paper and read the news. More building approved, and more displaced wildlife looking for shade that isn't there.
They cleared twenty acres of woods last month for luxury apartments. Right down the road from where they put up that new data center, a giant grey concrete box humming away in the sun.
They tell us not to let the tap run while we brush our teeth, but then they turn around and approve five hundred new units. Where do they think the water is coming from when five hundred more people turn on their showers at seven in the morning?
It seems like anywhere they find a cluster of trees, someone wants to pave it over.
It used to rain here every afternoon around four o'clock. You could set your watch by it. The heat would build, the woods would breathe moisture up into the air, and the sky would open up and soak everything down. It cooled the asphalt and let the ground breathe.
Now the trees are gone. Concrete does not breathe. It just swallows the heat and radiates it right back up at you.
The sky stays pale and dry, and the air sits heavy on your chest.
I walked down to the mailbox today to pull out a package of vitamin supplements I ordered online. The dark brown glass bottle inside was so hot from sitting in the metal box that I couldn't even hold it without switching hands. The softgel capsules inside had already melted into one solid, useless mass at the bottom of the jar.