The entire country seems to be swept up in the smothering heat of a long, blinding, burning Texas summer. It isn’t so much the climate—though it is that, too, and I have spent hours half-asleep reflecting on the fact that one day, should the slow creep of equatorial heat continue, everyone will eventually index the world to the same catalog of images I did growing up: dead earthworms baking on the sidewalk, melted asphalt clinging to rubber-soled sneakers, caution tape draped over schoolyard playgrounds with signs warning of second-degree burns.
