85.

Rain again. How summer isn’t coming. The afternoon sun, golden, shafting in at a slant. And these puddles lying crossways on the road, deep and still. Take a memo, Miss Jones. Let it run as follows: There was rain today, there will be rain tomorrow.

Slashes on the windowpane. Dribbles on the fall. Gloomy morning, gloomy noontime, gloomy day with no hint of what is to come. The future. Will it be warm and sunny again? Or bloody like this forever?

Cutting bread and then, sharply, skin. Red speckles on the wrap, on the bread. Spotted.

Rain starts up again in the afternoon. The sound of rain a thousand shushes, a phalanx of Spanish soldiers: sssss. The blood slows, thickens, clots.