I was on my back on the warm part of the sidewalk, which is the part the sun has been on, and I was thinking about the sirens, and the shots, and the dogs barking. All three at once. They are not the same size in my head but I let them be, for the length of the sidewalk.

The stone I just found is the best one I have ever found. I say this about every stone. I keep it under my arm where the skin is loose and I have kept some for years and I do not know where those are now. This one is grey with a white line through it that goes all the way around, which is rare. I checked.

Before the walk I was in the kitchen. There was a roach in the middle of the floor. It did not move. I did not move. Three minutes, maybe five. I had a conversation with myself, and maybe, but probably not, with the roach. I want to say probably not because I was there. The roaches I mind are the ones on the table, the two that were doing what they were doing on the table, in front of the figs. I got incensed. I should not have been incensed. I know that now and I knew it then and it did not help.

I used to pick the figs. And limes. Both grow here in the yards, and you can go out with a bowl and come back with the bowl full and nobody says anything, because the tree is doing it regardless. That is the part of the neighborhood I would tell someone about first if they asked, and nobody asks that.

There was a shooting on the street I walked down. I found out later that it was two hours before I walked down it. There was nothing on the street. No tape, no glass, nothing to read. The street had closed over it the way water does. I had walked through the exact place and looked at a fence and thought about the fence.

I played basketball at the community center in the heat. The court is outside, next to the pool. The pool is full and it is closed. It closed in the middle of June, before the summer had properly started, because they could not get the lifeguards. A pool that is full and closed looks, from the court, exactly like a pool. You only find out by wanting to get in. I played anyway. The heat is the whole game there; nobody chose that court over anything, the court is what was open.

Then I lay down. The sirens go by on Saint Claude and the shots are somewhere behind that and the dogs are the dogs. I put the stone on my chest so I could see it.

They said I don't know where I'm going.