What happened? The young summer has matured overnight into a wrath of blistering, heavy heat. We're at its mercy, standing under the waves of dissipating solar power, falling over us in particles. Smouldering blankets of hot winds and crazy energy.

I'm lying around on my bed while glimpsing out the window. I can see the heat rise in gassy little bits of curling waves off the streets and rooftops. I realize ironically that I have a summer cold. It makes me feel hot have to fight off the urge to sneeze every time I roll over. I knew something was off last month, something was wrong. Then I went straight into a few weeks out of town to race hard, driving me into the ground. I've been so tired since I've been home, so down. Now it's been a week, working with the sick, and I'm sick again. The same thing happened when I returned from racing in California... I push my immune system into overload racing and pick up some sort of little microbe on a mission at work. Well I'm home now, ready to relax and recover my legs from racing. I guess the recovery has now moved into other areas as well; as long as it stays out of my lungs, that's all I ask.

///Tonight I've had time to think, in my bed, where the best thinking occurs. I've realized my mind has been running around playing with new colors, stirring forgotten emotions.
My eyes are parched, they've been looking in a distant direction, looking at the sun, blinding them. Now it's difficult to discern anything familiar or unrecognizable, perhaps instead rediscovery through touch. It feels like being outside on a sunny day, then running indoors and everything is dark while all the little rods and cones adjust to the state of things. I feel my way around reaching out for the wall that I know is safe and there.

/////I had a dream that I was in an arid landscape without cover and the heat was emitting itself in waves off of all the plants and stones around me. There was a huge mirrored billboard sign. I didn't know I was lost, but engraved in cursive onto its glass it said, Apocalypse: This Way. Everything beyond the mirrored billboard was badlands and I was almost there.

I'd been wrapping myself up, in a spell that ended being only caused by myself and a figment of my imagination. It was unfamiliar and exciting and fun and odd and WONDERFUL! But now reeling and lying here in bed, alone, thinking. My head hurts and I know all I need is sleep but I cannot.

//////He's found a doll. It's small and seemingly resilient and stuffed with wool and wrapped in a pinkish felt. It's a not much of a doll but it amuses him. It has pearls for eyes and pink lips, her hair is drab and brown like boots. He places a small wreath around the top of the dolls head and it stings because it is made of barbs that attach roughly to her woolen skull. It's like purple thistles but it's not, it's made of needles from the sea. They glow an indescribable color that exists outside of the spectrum. Their color makes up the ink that pulses inside these otherwise invisible creatures that dwell in caverns at the bottoms of the deepest oceans. They can only be found by those who are lost. He's collected these needles all his life. They're shaped like barbs and he weaves delicate wreaths and sometimes necklaces with them.

He finds the old scissors he used in grammar school to cut Valentine's cards. His fingers are too thick now, but he pushes the tips inside the holes. He begins to cut through the smallish ruffled neckline of her pale & yellow dress that looks like a tulip. He runs the blade along the lines of her torso, following possible nerves and imaginary bones. Its blade is so cold, but it feels like heat. Burning her, he misses and cuts the flesh a little bit. He sews it up with pink staples.

On land and when he was a young at heart, he found rusted pins in an old jewelry box in the attic while his grandmother was sleeping. He's always held onto them for protection, but now, he pushes them along the doll's spine and combs her hair with their sharp edges, running the points across her head and along the bridge of her nose.

He uses rusted carpenter's nails from a tin box that he dug up one evening while the sun was setting. He pushes the nails into the doll's chest, peppering her dreams with anxiety, awakening her with paranoia, and restlessness & unease.

Before bed he opens a box of moths. They're hungry. They feast on the wool that makes up her belly.

Lastly, he pierces her heart with and old feather pen and watches it bleed with blue ink. It stains all of his fingers.