76 brief views of Cleveland: #11

They say fall's coming on, but I don't believe 'em. Fall doesn't come on, here. Fall dashes in one week while you're sleeping, checks out the contents of your fridge, grabs a handful of candy and spare change from the kitchen counter, screws up your toilet's flap valve, and runs back out the door, hardly disturbing the sheets on the bed in the guestroom before winter comes in to dampen the carpet inside the door.

It's like that, today. A confused flurry. I'm driving home from the dentist's with a mouthful of gauze and a memory of some bit of tooth going crack. I'd much rather leave that sound behind. I missed the turn onto Clague thinking of it, so now I'm stuck on Center Ridge until I find that other on-ramp, which is up there, somewhere, usually is, when I remember to turn the way that makes no sense.

It rained the night before and it rained a lot during the day, tapering off to drizzles, taking last night's potent burst of muggy heat with it, the air cooling and the wind stirring up, like the air's got some place to be but can't find the direction, not just yet.

Before they did the thing with the yanking, we three--the soft spoken dentist, the perky assistant, and the moron who screwed up--looked out the window and said, "Yeah, looks like the storm's moving on," and I believed it, so it was a shock when I drove out of the parking lot smack into a wall of clouds, dark. They weren't raining. They didn't have to. All muscle, no punch.

And somewhere in there, the setting sun behind me reflects off an orange construction sign. (Was that on the highway? Back on Center Ridge? Or was it down Clague, down where I'd never have seen, where the sun wouldn't have reached? I'm as confused as the wind.) And for a minute, it's like a splash of color inside a black and white photo; the starkness the sharpest line in the world, the crack inside the mouth of the city. A work in progress, the season coming apart.

(In loose response to)