What July Does When It Stays Too Long

July eighteenth. The heat this week is the kind that makes you reorganize your whole day around it, errands before nine, windows open until ten, a fan angled at the exact right corner of the kitchen table. By afternoon the apartment holds the warmth like it's keeping it for something.

I've been thinking about how differently time moves in summer when there's no external schedule imposing a shape on it. The mornings feel generous until they don't. I got a parking ticket on Tuesday because I forgot the street-cleaning side switches on the fifteenth, July fifteenth, same as always, and I've lived here long enough to know better. The ticket is sitting on the counter next to Gerald, and I'm choosing not to look at it directly, the way you don't look directly at a small mistake you should have avoided.

I went to open studio again on Thursday. This is, I think, the third time. I didn't plan to mention it here, it's not the point of the post, but I notice I keep going, which is its own kind of information. Simone came this one. We didn't make much. There's something specific about the wheel without a class structure, without an instructor moving from station to station, it asks you to already know what you want, which is funny because that's exactly what I usually don't know yet when I sit down. I stayed the full two hours. I think Simone did too, because when I finished rinsing my hands she was still at the sink behind me.

Post-wheel sink ritual. Clay takes longer to leave than you'd think.

We walked out together into whatever that light is at eight-thirty in July, not quite dark, not quite anything. The street smells different in this heat, concrete and something sweet from the corner bakery even at that hour. Simone said something I can't remember exactly, and I said something back, and then we went different directions. The bus was four minutes away when I got to the stop. That's the whole evening, and it was enough, and I'm still thinking about it in the way I think about things that have quietly decided to become habits.

End of another Thursday. The door stays open a little while before someone lets it close.