The Texture of Experience

The heat has been rising all day to an incinerating pitch. At the designated hour, I arrive at the address on foot, exhausted and dusty. It’s an old, dingy residential hotel on a sunbaked street in a rundown neighborhood prowled by starving dogs, their every rib sharply outlined. When I look up, squinting against the glaring sky, what appears to be an angel with a sword in its outstretched arm is hovering above the roof. Nothing like this happens here, a man who has materialized beside me says. I start to reply, but can’t. There are things that have no name even in the most poetic language.