the trouble with summer is that too much guilt floats around. in winter, there's no point ruing over a day lost. the day has been forfeited already. in summer, losing just one faultless day, by giving in, say, to seasonal sloth or to a petty carping over humidity completely bearable, ah, what remorse.
in this afternoon of summer, sounds of guilt seep through my window: little girls, shrieking as piercingly as their mothers, while they perfect their double dutch maneuvers in the curbside. the gush of water celebrating its release from the hellishly hot emergency hydrant, its flange illegally tinkered with by a bored father wishing to humor his daughters. the pied piper song of the mobile ice cream vendor is like a cool bead of sweat running down the small of my back.
from my neighbor upstairs, the hum, no the clack, of their decade old air conditioning unit sings plaintively of passions unrecoverable. and somewhere between the rattle of my neighbor's ac and the swish of the water flooding the curbside, floats in the oafish cooing of a heat stricken pigeon fraying further the selvage of the flimsy veil of a soon to be forgotten afternoon dream.
