This heat wave feels familiar.

I’ve endured plenty of summers like this,
but this one strikes a resemblance, 
Like an enemy waiting for me to drop.
I wake up already exhausted.

The air is heavy.
The sky refuses to break.
Everything feels harder than it should.
Even breathing seems like work.

The sun bears down from above
the same way responsibility does.

Bills.
Expectations.
Unanswered prayers.
The weight of being needed
by people who have no idea
how tired you are.

Every direction feels hot.
Pressure from every angle.
Pressure from the version of myself
I know I should be by now.

No shade.
No relief.
Just another day
of carrying what must be carried.

And the strange thing about heat
is that eventually it stops feeling hot.

You adapt.
Though it doesn’t hurts any less,
It’s just that suffering has a way
of becoming normal.

You stop asking when the rain is coming.
You stop checking the forecast.
You just keep moving.
One foot followed by the other.

Waiting.
Hoping.
Trusting

I know somewhere beyond
this endless stretch of cloudless sky,
something is gathering.
Because every drought eventually ends.

Every field that cracks beneath the sun
is still capable of growing again.
Maybe that’s the lesson
hidden inside this unbearable weather:

Resilience isn’t proven
when conditions are favorable.
It’s proven when the heat won’t let up,
when the pressure keeps mounting,
when every part of you wants relief,

and yet somehow…

you keep going anyway.