The block is quiet this evening.

Well, not still quiet. Still the sounds of air conditioner units, the occasional peel-out on 43rd Street, the chirps and squawks of small birds and the occasional wayward seagull.

I sit under a large umbrella whose angle keeps the sun off my face, but onto my legs, stretched out on our back deck. My toes wiggle in the warmth, unaccustomed to not being inside socks.

My phone lays In the shade, and I have resolved not to touch it except to change the song playing on the Bluetooth speaker. I’ve selected a playlist of old school R&B and somehow can’t help but to remark how on-point my music selection is.

In my cup is bourbon, or is it vodka lemonade? A bottle of water’s condesation forms a ring on the small metal end table out here for the purpose of holding drinks and the ashtray which, while barren now, would have a cigar’s smoke wafting lazily had the urge struck me.

The wind makes the foliage growing between the porch and the fence rustle; I should really cut that stuff, but that entails getting under the porch and I have neither time nor inclination. You win this one, random weeds.

The calm I feel, outside, blessed to not be stressing about loved ones, or my next meal, and I am thankful. The voices in my head whose suicidal urges and negative talk were really loud when I was younger barely make a peep now. I am looking forward, figuratively.

I can’t really look forward literally because there sits a house, newly built, between me and these sun rays. Sunset over that house yields an artificial sunset, one where the porch is drenched in shade and the temperature dips. So I look off to the sides, at our lawn, slightly brown due to the recent lack of rain, or to the other side, a large vacant lot who, if city records are to be believed, were once home to three other buildings like ours; two flats with a basement, enough space for two or three families to live. This space is now stalked by a number of feral cats amidst the wild grasses, mown twice a summer by the city.

But I sit in this quiet, and my mind can wander, and I am at peace.