Written from a song prompt and minor revisions made. Don’t really know what this is but the image tickles me.
The streets hop with agitated energy. There’s a traffic jam in the rotary. Was there a car crash? I figure someone’s overheated, because everyone’s overheated today. The jam goes right around the fountain, and the drivers all look at it kind of jealously, wishing they could abandon their cars and toss off their ties and jackets and go for a wild naked romp under the water’s frigid sprinkles.
One girl is skipping against the tide, picnic basket tucked under her arm. how can she have that much energy on a day like this?
I’m feeling hot and beleaguered. Adults ought to have summers off, too. Nobody wants to work in the summer.
The girl skips past me and I notice a dog peeking out from her picnic basket, like Dorothy on her way to Oz. I have a strange desire to follow her. What would happen if I did? Might I start skipping behind her, too? Might others follow me? And then there’d be a huge line of merrily skipping working stiffs, all ending up in the park for a picnic?
We’d wind our way, like a big cheery conga line, through the neighborhood. Office buildings would clear, cars would sit abandoned, as we one by one joined the throng of impromptu delinquents. And the food that would come! Housewives would emerge from brownstones with crates of freshly baked cookies. The ice cream man would follow our parade. Deli chefs would carry piles of platters wobbling treacherously in their steady hands. By the time we ran cheering through the park’s gates, the whole town would be doused in the aroma of pastrami and popovers, and we’d sit beneath the trees, laughing and eating until our buttons popped one by one and we fell happily asleep.
It occurs to me that I’m smiling now.
