MJ Slide
July 26, 2021
The thing about a siren is it’s supposed to get quieter. Somehow we know. We hear it scream past, on a busy road, broken concrete strewn with litter and autumn leaves, dissipating - growing faint.
It didn’t get quieter. It stayed constant, catching their breath in a vice, hot and tight, all panic - no disco. It made them feel crazy, rusty nails and bone ache. They’d come to Belle Isle for a reprieve.
Secured a cup of coffee and a maple donut from Rose’s Fine Foods. Crossed the bridge. The coffee was growing cold and so were their hands. They were a southern transplant, by way of the hazy Carolinas. Their blood needed to thicken. As did their brown skin, protection and reflection of a city that felt like a series of beautiful calluses that no one has the right to judge.
Wandering past the glass gilt conservatory they wondered who made the choices. To have the city cops train maneuvers in the first empty lot with their sirens on full blast, a demented alley-cat wail. To have two stark white gazebos, each in their own grove of yellow blazed hardwoods, separated by the street cutting ribbons up and down the island. One, meticulously maintained. The other? Abandoned to the elements, a budgetary sacrificial lamb. They found a curb, lit up a cig and smoked it, ash and coffee grounds, stuffing the remnants in their coat pocket.
No sense in littering.
No sense in sirens.
No crime. No chase.
Just choices.