drizzle raze a thin film of rainfall cools my forearms and kisses the bridge of my nose. right here. like this. see? it darkens the paved path and chips away at the transient kindness some stranger left behind in three places. a few steps from the parking lot, "you are awesome," in orange and pink sidewalk chalk. near the back entrance, "you are beautiful," in white. a line for each word. and in the middle of everything, where it's easy to miss, "be kind," in blue. two affirmations and a piece of almost invisible advice. i see something growing out of a bench's cast iron railing. a thicket of leaves with a green flower for a face. but this is no act of thaumaturgy. it isn't even anything that's alive. it's a bag of shit. some dog that walks around on two legs plucked it from the earth after it slithered out of the ass of a smaller animal and dropped it for someone like me to step on or be bewildered by. an intricate network of webbing stretches from tree to tree. silk to trap the living. you need the right light to catch it before it ambushes you. and here, a scent transformed by distance. for a few seconds it's the smell of the maple cream cookies i loved when i denied myself nothing. then the window closes, and it's the stink of a carbon-fueled engine. all the sweetness the moment held is lost, along with what little wet there was. they promised us so much more. they always do. 220824 what's it to you? who go blather from