Draft 3 Week 13

Plague

The year was long and summer
imposed itself on us like an obligation,
I remember the whole town seemed to sink under the weight of it.

July brought with it a recombinant, orange haze
that swarmed the streets in the afternoon, and even the platoons
of teenagers had conceded their parking-lot jurisdiction
to the indoors.

That summer you were like a factory, and
I was your column of smoke: the pollution
of your machine.

At night, I walk up the road to the abandoned industrial park,
past the mounds of twisted rubble and old conduits
strung-out along the embankments of the company lake.

This town will wear you down.