Hot Tick Summer

Katiy Heath

Sunday upstate, two city slickers reunite in the Adirondacks. Dressed like sleepaway campers with their kitschy red shorts and tall socks and bare skin. They avoid the family-friendly path, brush past the hikers beware sign and into the tallgrass Fire Loop where anything can happen from the waist down. Sometimes it's Crusher Hill. Sometimes it's Saturday. Sometimes he brings his phone, I wear a thong and the wrong shoes. Rarely we turn back in this humidity, until we're back at the cabin, sticky with deet and prairie home nostalgia. Then it's shirts off, pants off, socks-sunnies-undies all shaken off into the tub. Neither of us typically does bugs, yet here we are again, weak with insectophobia, me leaning back on elbows, legs open, knees apart, him tracing each freckle, inspecting as if each spot were a sesame seed sized nymph in heat. He loses track of time; I wonder what he sees. Did he miss me. Does he still love love me like I love love him. Will I finish before he finds something. Questions I never ask as to not distract him from his gentle audit of my folds.

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About Author

KATIY HEATH is a writer from Saint Joseph, Missouri. Her writing has appeared in Joyland, Catapult, HAD, XRAY, among others, and has been supported by Millay Arts, Virginia Center for the Creative Arts (VCCA), and NES Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. For more, visit her website or follow her on Instagram/X.