The World Gone All Lemony

I drove my daughter to school. The world was yellow and people had dug out their masks, pulled sweaters over their faces like robbers. The air was thick. You could have cut it into wedges like a Spanish pie. Red lights didn’t seem to mean anything, and a woman with a compression sleeve hiked over her thigh wore a plastic boot too, as if a whole world of misfortune had visited her. At the office, Brenda waved a surveying sort of hand and said we were at the cusp, and that sounded about right. Nobody cared any more, there was no time, with fire sweeping south and builders’ cranes stilled against the sky like paper cuts. Someone on Montreal St had climbed an aluminum ladder to trim a cedar hedge. The electrical cord was wrapped foolishly around an arm, a wrist, even one of the rungs, but not to worry, I thought, the shears will sort that out. The air smelled of cypress and ash, and head-down birds carried it all on their backs like a message.