New York City, July 10, 2017

★★★★ The dim and bright moments of the morning each seemed too strong to be chasing the other in such rapid succession. Possibly a drop or two of rain blew down out of the broken patterns overhead. The day had seemed cool at first but the linen shirt started sticking to the skin. The main office window had been washed and the unusual clarity of it added to the increasing sharpness of the daylight. To freshly dilated eyes, the sky outside the eye doctor’s office was a horror, a cascade of greenish molten glass. Tears squirted out and ran down to the tip of the nose on the blind struggle around the corner to the subway. Somehow the tears had gotten up into the eyebrows. On the way back out into the sun, a pair of legs in white pants leading the way up the subway stairs felt as if they were kicking the corneas with each step. The crosswalks were radioactive. By the time it was safe to look out at the sky again, it had gone grimy gray and orange.