This is what I’m asked to love. Of course the sun is white and hot and indifferent. It is saying, I present you, again, with this unsparkling pavement. I wanted a pair of shoes for all occasions and weathers. I hiked along the road without a sidewalk and hunched under the boughs that required my hunching. I didn’t care if others saw me hunch below the low branches, passing in their tinted cars. The world was made for them. I saw a woman approach from afar in a yellow dress, who I thought was my reward, but she too passed me as if she didn’t know me, which she didn’t. Everything seemed figured out, or, if not figured out, hopelessly confused. I wanted to ride a good mood until it broke only at the end of me, along my most uninhabited shore. Only then did I want to be touched. I could feel the cold air coming from the north. Soon the sun would go, and there would be mosquitoes. The air cluttered with tiny wings. It sounds almost nice put in those words. Tiny wings to lift the blood.