I finished reading Maggie Nelson’s Bluets and when I looked up from the book there was a blue tarp covering a barbecue on the balcony of a neighbouring building.

I suppose the tarp has always been there. But today its corners are teased by the wind. It’s the only moving thing against concrete, glass, and grey sky.

In the distance, blue rips through the skysheet. Not light but blue.

Very rarely does a book change what you notice in the world by shifting into the foreground what was background.