I stepped outside and started running. I followed the smooth guttered curb and turned the corner along the quiet street by the old people’s apartment complex. I felt free and fit and strong for about a minute and a half. Then I made the next right turn and hit the long stretch along the drainage canal. And a cramp in my side exploded like part of my lung was sticking to my ribs and I slowed down and then slowed down a little more and then just walked.
Walking wasn’t bad.
I listened to Silversun Pickups and then the Ting Tings and then Lady Gaga and then the Red Hot Chili Peppers. I wanted to dance a little. I hummed and murmured songs and walked off the cramp with a sway to my hobbled step.
After a right and another right, on the winding stretch back to my house, the breeze picked up. 7:45 pm. With the breeze, 85 degrees felt more like 75 degrees. Felt like fall, just a little, felt faraway. Felt like.
***
The smell of sweet, fresh cut grass takes me back to New Bedford. Always, always. It has to be dry grass, dry weather. The scent carried softly, more like a touch than a smell.
With the wind on my face, I’m standing on a huge rock at Fort Phoenix. I feel the heft and power of the slab of granite beneath my feet. Because in Florida, at home, where I go to school and it’s hot and always the same when the lightning isn’t cracking down, we don’t have big rocks. It’s flat.
I slide down a smooth-rough edge, go a little too fast, grab at handholds and finally push my palms down to slow my descent. I scrape them, just a little, and they burn. Then I land with a faint squish, my sneakers digging into the rocky sand at the shore.
My long hair whips at my face. I look at the sea. I listen to the gentle lapping sound of calm waters of Buzzards Bay. To me, it’s the ocean. It’s all the majesty of the greatest seas, all the fury. It’s dark.
So I balance on the rocks at the water’s edge. I brush my fingers against a slimy patch of seaweed and I listen to the peculiar pop and crackle of the water rushing along patches of periwinkles.
Summer isn’t hot here. It bursts with salty breezes and potential and winding roads that snake away from smokestacks and tenements toward hills that roll like soft green swells.
***
My mile takes sixteen and a half minutes. When I return to my front door, the breeze (remember it?) presses at my back, taps at my shoulder.
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