snow-white slippers and butterflies in the dazzling heat

2024, june 25, kreuzberg

a snow-white slipper sits on the gravel path, with light and shadows from the summer trees playing on its soft white surface. a rubber dinghy floats in the middle of the canal, anchored to a buoy, with a couple of girls seated inside. they wear sun hats and their feet dangle lazily over the edge. one of them opens a pale red sunshade, its color so faded it seems bleached by many summers. on the kottbusser brücke, amidst a lot of trash, a white butterfly flits back and forth, treating the trash as a legitimate landscape. water reflections flicker on the dark green body of the van loon boat.

a few juvenile swans, not yet fully white, stand on the dry summer grass, grooming themselves, pecking at their feathers. a gray tracksuit hangs on the canal’s fence, fluttering slightly in the wind, looking as if it’s been laid out to dry.

two women in gray robes and black headscarves are hanging out on a picnic rug in the shade, with them a laptop, chocolate müllermilch, and strawberries. one of them holds a strawberry and gestures animatedly, as if discussing something emotionally charged like love or other disasters, occasionally taking a bite of the strawberry.

someone sits by the canal in a dazzlingly silver coat that glitters intensely under the sunlight. as i walk past, the blazing sunlight strikes different parts of the coat at each step, causing it to sparkle in varying directions.