August Here Is A Full Contact Sport

You step outside and the humidity arrives first, like a hand on your chest. Ninety-four becomes a hundred and eight. Locals move at exactly one speed from June to September and consider anyone walking faster to be either a tourist or in some kind of trouble.

Batteries get bought without discussion. The pantry gets a little deeper. Somebody in every family knows exactly where the paperwork is. It is not fear, exactly; it is the practical memory of a city that keeps its plans quietly updated and its jokes close at hand.

Grown men in full sun carrying brass, and not one of them cutting it short. Somebody handed the tuba player a water and he took it between phrases without breaking time. This city has never once let weather have the final word on a parade and it is not going to start now.