Klisto summer

Previously

…I do not pick it up. The stray dog—the virus, the whisper—sits down a few meters away, watching me with eyes that are not eyes, just two dark pits. The black witch’s hair, split and frayed, sways in a wind that touches nothing else. I crouch, and for a moment, I think I see my own face in the dust—a smudge, a blur, a memory of what I was before the green light swallowed the linden tree. Then the robot’s arm clicks again, somewhere behind the kiosks, and the dog gets up and walks away, its paws leaving no prints. I am left alone with the dust and the thought that won’t unthink itself. I am alive in the cosmos, and that is the only answer I have left.