This is an ultrasound of my city. Summer heat so primal it screams. Imitation skyscrapers stretch their square necks toward a sadistic sky. Boarded windows in front of a flaking orange building swallow light and darkness with the same tight-lipped bite. The pavement knows the language of feet, the incessant medley of need, how I use sunrises and sunsets to tick off rumbling urgency in the calendar of my stomach. This afternoon wind is packed in an attic of clouds. Gray drizzle hoods the city for days. Silence trapped in a mulberry’s wet fallen leaves. Next month that tree will be a naked effigy. There is no sleight of hand; this is how fall arrives. September with its powerful cold arms wrestles to fit into the same skin of space as summer’s screaming heat in the birth canal of a fire-colored season.