The sidewalk exhales the last of August’s heat into the hollow of my shoes. Amber leaks from the streetlamps too early, staining the glass of shopfronts where mannequins hold their breath as if waiting for someone who already left. I walk the long rectangle of the avenue counting the places the light refuses to fall. Somewhere a radio bleeds a song I almost recognize— the melody bent by distance, the words washed thin. Your name is the shape the wind makes when it turns the corner ahead of me and never looks back. Leaves that have not yet decided to leave their branches scrape the concrete in small, private arguments. The air tastes of iron and overripe pears, of rain that never quite arrives. I keep my hands in my pockets so they will not reach for the absence walking beside me. In the café windows steam rises and vanishes the way certain evenings do— slowly, then all at once. I pass the same bench three times before I notice the paint is peeling in the exact pattern of a mouth that never finished its sentence. The city changes its clothes. and so does the sky. As the sun ceases its high ascent, I catch the certain whispers of its change.
