Midmorning on Sunday in August

August 18th, 2024

My body has a sweetly sticky, sweaty, sickly smell. No matter the morning shower. My body adjusts to the outside nature of the midmorning on Sunday in August — which is sweetly sticky, sweaty, and sickly. The air in the midmorning on Sunday in August is sweetly sticky, sweaty, and sickly — permeating everything everywhere. There is another smell though, more pronounced than the typical August air. The goldenrods are in bloom everywhere and that adds to the unexpected raw naturalness of smells in the air. It is not a pleasant smell, just as goldenrods are not pleasant. They take over any parched part of the ground everywhere and are so obvious that no one pays them any attention. Except for me, today in the midmorning on Sunday in August.

There is a thunderstorm coming, and that brings another smell to the equation of smells in the midmorning on Sunday in August. That might be a smell of hope for parched earth and parched nature and parched people here. There is also something sinister about seeing the horizon getting darker and inexorably getting closer. The wind picks up as well but brings no relief just yet from oppressive heat and humidity. Outside the window, I can hear a particular sound coming from the playground — metal-to-metal rhythmic scraping coming from a parched swing on which a girl had been swinging. Alone in the playground in the midmorning on a Sunday in August. For an hour, relentlessly swinging to and fro on the children's swing in the midmorning on a Sunday in August. There is something sinister about it as well.