On evenings when the warmth of summer still welcomed people outside to wander, I’d walk the width of the unfinished sidewalks splintered with wind, saw failing apples turn brown as cardboard, heard the yells of sellers swelling the air. I loved these walks, I the stranger always in this city, who for a year mistook your smell for rubber. I didn’t bother asking who you really were, just assumed you were the fragrance of a tire that’d left its track on the path.
