Webster’s defines “Comfort” as:

The K-9 unit barks rabidly as I cross the bridge. I smile back at the blank cop in the driver-seat; they’re always behind dark glasses, the purported protectors, so you can’t see their eyes, ever. How can you protect anybody when you’re behind dark glass? The clouds rake across the bridge, which is up now because a boat wants to leave the Black River and slip into Lake Erie, maybe on its way to Canada. They’re behind a deeper, clearer glass: the glass of my own sight. This is neither a solid nor a liquid, but something slow, something with lips of glaciers, speech of dry, cracked air. Why is the world always popping around me like that? As I walk, I feel this early August heat closing around my body, misting my thighs. I’m carving a space for myself in it, or is it simply giving me my perimeter? The other day, in the middle of the city, near a house set far back from the street, someone had propped one of those leaning silhouettes against their porch; in dim light, you’re supposed to believe that someone’s leaning against that house, smoking a pipe.

This is not a pipe. At least, on good days like this, I do believe the heat has something it can close upon