No Easy Way Down

Someone said to her: “Are your avocados in the oven?”

To which she said: “Excuse me. Do I know you?”

“You are very angry, aren’t you?”

“Again, do I know you, sir?”

He moved about her in a drunken semi-circle and professed: “I am a visionary, missy. I see things you can’t imagine. Hexagons. Bike routes to heaven. Heathen paths to perdition and desolation.” He adjusted the rope he wore as a belt and riled himself up for a jeremiad, but she turned and walked away.

Clarity would wait another day. Another day in the southern city. Clear as a cross-oceanic Saharan dust storm—which are becoming regular fixtures of this anthropogenic age.

What I’m Reading:

On the Brighton Beach boardwalk men sit in the rain shelters smelling of piss, shouting drunk genius into the afternoon sun.

— Gala Mukomolova / “On the Brighton Beach Boardwalk”