The sun rises and the whole city is a boiling kettle of people and birds and sleepy insects; plastic bottles unscrewed, then thrown away; thirst is greedily quenched and the remaining wet coolness is sprayed on hot faces; the tarmac is melting, swallowing dust and dry leaves, and then our thoughts and the soles of our shoes.
Strange movement in the trees, green sunlight like smoke, we follow it to the city’s edge where the sun rules supreme and flower-dotted meadows stretch before us, horizon to horizon. Under the glowing opal sky winds move through grass and the colours tremble, and we fall down like dry twigs, cracking and laughing, and then disappear under the chartreuse lushness, the prickly stalks like needles, scratching our faces, surrounded by bees and otherworldly violet dragonflies that weightlessly hover over moving islands of grass.
The cold river licks our bodies and we pretend we don’t exist anymore, dissolve in the water, merge with the murk and the silt and the slowly moving currents, wishing for the trees, and the air, and the shimmer to never end.
