Cycling in the South Bay

I found my motel after a lot of hunting. Shortly after the search began, the rain came. Big brown rivers rolled through the streets; sewer lids boiled around the edges with freshly aromatic offerings, pungent humanity.

Everyone with a roof got under it. Everyone without found an overhang, a tarp, a metal cover overarching a pedestrian walkway. Men seated on woollen blankets, unshaven and hungry, looked at me with hollow eyes fully alert, multitudes that reproached me as I passed, never saying a word. I passed a huge dog crammed into a cage so small he couldn’t stand, gnawing his tail and moaning the song of the dead, the insane.

My crisp white motel sheets strangled me to sleep.

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END

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