What It’s Like with You

I remember biking on Xi’an’s city wall the hottest day I’ve lived through so far. Sun strong as anything, my shoulders glistening with the promise of burn. I was wearing sunglasses but still squinted against the old brick that made the walls, the ground, the square pillars that dotted along to mark where amongst the infinite drudge of the wall I had been. I remember, because the heat was a solid mass my bike and I moved through. I felt preserved. It was noon. Not far away, glass skyscrapers blinked like satellites.

At some point the sun moved and with it, the shadows. The stalks of lamps along the wall cast them and one by one they lengthened into the path of my bike. Thin strips of black along otherwise sienna, like needles to puncture the heat. They were spaced every few meters, and as I passed under one, I glimpsed the briefest moment of relief. And then another.