Setting the scene

It’s Sunday morning.  I’m watching my city move.

From the 6th floor, watching it rise.

A slight breeze rustles the palm trees.  A nurse, in colorful scrubs and red Crocs, hair half-tinted a reddish blonde, walks down the street singing a gospel tune and the radio quietly sings along.  Traffic is moving, like waves on a concrete ocean, trailing ribbons of muggy exhaust.  Cloudy, with tolerable early humidity and a 100% chance of broiling by noon.  It’s 9am and the methadone actors, clad in dirty black and grey, have taken their places, slowly limp-shuffling up the street.  Disappearing, only to be replaced by a kid, clad in clean black and grey, counting his money.  A couple, freshly showered, dressed in crisp white and khaki, crosses to the bus stop.  And on the corner, where a boy was shot, older men amble to the corner store, for coffee, for cigarettes, for….

Nearby, a leaf blower loudly, uselessly moves the dirt and broken bottles from the dead boy’s invisible memorial.

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