Summer Day

The humidity is thick and exhausting to wade through, the air pregnant and overdue a thunderstorm, like the swampy weather I remember from the summers of my youth in Alexandria, Virginia. Air conditioning was something you went to the movies for, or to the video arcade at the mall, or maybe to the Smithsonian if you were broke and could only afford metro fare. In those days, everyone sat on their stoops and sweltered, or sat in front of a fan by the window. Evenings were about lightning bugs, watermelon, and throwing shoes in the air to watch bats swoop down at them.

Now I drink iced coffee and pant in front of the window a/c, but sometimes, I still sit on the stoop. In a mask of course, and I leave the bats and fireflies alone.