Photo by Lawrence Crayton on Unsplash
by Dawn Tasaka Steffler
When we exchanged our wedding vows, my husband said I was the only woman who ever tamed the rabid wolverine in his soul; in my presence, he felt as calm as a bunny rabbit, and from the corner of my eye, I saw his mother dab at her eyes. Now, fifteen years and five, worthless kids later, I wonder if I misunderstood the gesture.
Where we live now, the air is wavy with heat, and the TV says it’s one-hundred-fifteen degrees outside. I’ve been having a recurring dream where everything is broken: the air conditioner in my car, the ice maker in the freezer, and when I pull his uniform shirts from the washing machine they’re pink, and I’m pacing the living room, waiting for repairmen to come to the house, but when I look out the living room window, all I see are Amazon delivery trucks circling our house like red-tailed hawks, then my husband comes home from work early and puts a glass under the ice maker; when no ice drops, he rages, Why isn’t this fixed yet, what the fuck do you do all day?
I wake from these dreams with a panicky fluttering in my throat, like wings beating in a too-small space or some small rodent throwing a thin layer of dirt over itself. Trapped between my snoring husband on one side and a sweaty, slumbering toddler on the other, I carefully pluck my phone from the nightstand and check the forecast; it’s triple-digit fire weather for the next ten days, and one spark is all it takes.
Dawn Tasaka Steffler prefers, hands down, cold weather over hot. Find more of her stories at dawntasakasteffler.com.
