we dream of ways out of the heat into exhaustion. i swat spiders that crawl along knobs weaving weak webs that crack in the wind. my daughter, capricious as ever, makes lists of the best parts of her day. they are always imagined. while my son has begun to crawl up and over the furniture leaving little teeth marks wherever his grip had slipped. we remember none of this waiting for the sky to break and i grab her hand in the dark. all of this is too real to keep. all of this snaps me into a million pieces.