It is summer and the air smells like a woman's breast, sweet and full of promises. We shed our clothing like shrouds, become friendly when we can feel the wind through fabric as thin as bandages. The ladies from upstairs believe I am a renegade, some sort of woman that they admire but, are a little confused by, they think that I speak Chinese, and behave unconventionally. They are wrong on both counts, conventional is only what we know rarely what we are. The police are everywhere these days, breaking things down, shuffling things around, I can tell when they do a walk through the alley, people emerge like some strange biblical story about a desert or a sea. There is resentment and relief.
The summer makes everyone want to be in love, it is the gentleness that is gliding on air, I am terrified by the joy that can be stripped away. I felt the surrender of love once, I am shy now. I have sat on the stoop, god I love that word, and drank two and half beer, this is building nostalgia in my heart. Tonight there is no one I miss. I do not want to become too comfortable in this place, this place that is lost halfway between everything and nothing. Anger and happiness fly around here like spoiled children all screaming or kisses. There was anger today, which I rarely feel anymore, but I let the night scoop it up and carry it away.