in the older section of a 19th-century Brooklyn cemetery, a damp stone bench set between tilting granite headstones, the nearest inscription worn to Gothic ghost-shapes, a gravel path cutting through overgrown August grass toward a canopy of mature oaks and elms whose leaves barely move — four steps into following the pigeon, stopped — it has veered left into grass, she has not yet turned back
The stone bench is damp through the cotton before I've been sitting long.
Not from rain — the sky is doing that August thing where it hasn't committed, just left everything slightly wet from the air. The older section of the cemetery is quiet enough that I can hear the difference between the trees moving and the trees not moving. The inscriptions here are mostly German, the Gothic letterforms worn to the point where the serifs have gone and you're reading the ghost of a shape rather than a shape. One stone still has a full name. Another has a year — 187-something, the last digit a smooth oval that could be zero or six or eight. I'm not reading them carefully. I'm just sitting until a pigeon lands on the path in front of me and walks in a specific, purposeful direction, and then I follow it for about four steps before it veers into the grass and I stop.
a row of worn German-inscription headstones in the older section, Gothic letterforms eroded to ghost-shapes, one legible name, one date reading 187-something
I've been here before without writing it down. I left it unwritten on purpose.
The slip dress is the longer one, cotton not silk, and it's the right call. I walked here in twenty minutes and arrived still cool.
In the afternoon the rain starts doing that thing where it's technically not raining. I put the olive shirt over the dress and walked to the counter on Wyckoff. Dollar fifty. The man handed me the cup without looking up. I said thank you. He'd already turned to the machine.
at a street-level takeout counter window cut into a Wyckoff Avenue building facade, the counter surface worn laminate, a commercial coffee machine visible behind the opening in steam and shadow, the awning above cutting the afternoon light into a hard stripe across the pavement — the man has already turned back to the machine — she is still facing the window, the cup just received, the exchange already finished before she has fully registered it
I stood against the building wall in the shade. The asphalt nearby had gone soft enough at the edges that my sandal left a faint impression when I shifted my weight. A kid was riding a bicycle in a slow circle in the middle of the block. The ice cream truck was two streets over, its song arriving in pieces through the damp air.
a short paper cup of bodega-style coffee on a worn formica counter, dollar-fifty cup, no lid
Somewhere in there the departure pressure arrived. Faint, administrative.
The bicycle made another circle.
on a Ridgewood side street pavement at late afternoon, the asphalt dark from the damp that never resolved into actual rain, a row of attached two-story brick residential buildings receding behind her, their small stoops and iron railings repeating, the sky above a uniform August grey beginning to go slightly amber at the edges as the hour shifts — stopped walking, facing slightly away from camera — the departure pressure has arrived, she has not yet moved to act on it
What she wore
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I wore the slip dress — the longer one, cotton not silk — because the cemetery in the morning is exactly the kind of place that doesn't need me to be dressed for anything.
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I put the olive shirt over the dress when the rain started doing that thing where it's technically not raining but everything is damp, and I had the coffee from the counter on Wyckoff and it was one-fifty and I didn't move for a while.
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At some point I changed — not for anywhere in particular, just because the evening version of your own apartment deserves slightly more intention than the afternoon one, even when you're not going out.