Forty-Two Degrees And The City Emptied

At two in the morning the tiles are still warm from a sun that set six hours ago. There is no breeze, only a change in the quality of the stillness. Somewhere below, a bar is closing. Somewhere above, a neighbour is also awake, also outside, and both of us pretend otherwise.

The sign says they return in September. It does not say what the men at the corner table are supposed to do until then. Two of them have been seen at a different bar, three streets over, sitting badly, like guests in someone else's house.

At three in the afternoon the streets are abandoned to the heat and to tourists who have not yet learned. At three in the morning there are children on scooters, grandmothers on folding chairs, and a queue outside an ice cream place that has no reason to be open and every reason to be open.