Panting Dogs Retreat

(or a day in the life of a city on a hot summer day in three hundred words)

Perspiration drips causing cheap make-up to form odd lines on the unsuspecting faces of social climbers. Shadows tease of cooler air in the humid thickened pudding of deserted summer streets. Puddles bring relief to children who splash and play without care of consequences. Old black women resemble flocks of flapping birds as they fan themselves in church pews and sing hymns about Jesus. Later they’ll stand before hot stoves with their hands on their hips to sigh and sweat over Sunday dinner while hydrants burst and children play.

Hot-headed cabdrivers maneuver through civilians who crowd empty and refill the foot plodded oil-streaked pavement. Drug dealers deal from corners and crack houses, secreting their stash to those who slobber along transfixed. Lemonade glasses and rocking chair swings decorate the imaginations of those who sit crowded on stoops, dreaming of ease. Whirring fans blow hot. The ice cream truck chasing of children results in melted sticky sweet smiles. Scream-laugh playground wars compete with horns, scolding mothers and the barking of panting dogs seeking retreat from thirst. Mothers call their children to come in to eat, while fathers from various economic brackets chug back beers, sit in offices or haul trash. Roaches lurk with hidden agendas in darkness.

Garbage reeks of better days and the decaying of sweetness. Storefronts offer promises whispered by Chanel, Jimmy Choo, Manolo Blahnik and Christian Louboutin’s red-soled stilettos that only a select few can hear as panhandlers and homeless vets beg for dollar signs. Wealthy matrons hire others to walk their dogs that wear diamond studded collars, while others feel lucky to find a cardboard box in a bit of shade to rest. This balletic litter of events, consisting of births, deaths and what feels desperately important, dances oddly in the heaviness of humidity like billowing newspapers floating.