I am standing in front of the open window and waiting for what comes next and there is a cool, sweet wind blowing into me.
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We were driving home from the vigil, full of adrenaline and fear and rage and love, and then we saw the moon, full and yellow and huge, hanging low in the sky over the freeways, and we stopped for a minute to be small and amazed and connected.
I was full of sharp pointy feelings and running late to get to a place I didn't want to go, and then it started to rain and that was too many things. But then I found a dry spot on a dusty bench under a little roof, and the rain poured and poured, and I called a friend and breathed in the rain smell and the air was cool and damp on my cheeks, and everything was okay again.
I waited by the side of the road, in the green and the blue and the dazzling sunshine, and watched a robin hop along, her tiny feet raising minuscule clouds of dust, with something ruddy and vaguely bug-like clamped delicately in her mouth. And then we were off, walking along the hillside and the tall cedars, past soft thimbleberry bushes and the occasional ripe berry (carefully split and shared), sweet and sour and then like eating carpet, past weird purple flowers and spotted slugs and up a breathless hill. We stopped at the top, panting, to watch the blue, blue, blue sky and sparkling sunlight that made us go half-lidded like smug cats and layers and layers of green leaves and clusters of shiny berries that glowed against the sun like warm red glass.
We came out of the dance studio, expecting the sharpness of the earlier heat, but instead it was soft and warm and the air was full of the smell of water. The first cold drops of rain hit us as we ran to our cars, and on the drive home the stormwind whipped the trees around against a backdrop of blindingly bright summer sky with stacks of puffy white clouds, past the edge of the storm, and after the storm was over the air was cool and sweet and the setting sun painted the bottoms of the clouds deep pink.
The waving pink blackberry flowers were full of bees, rooting in the soft bristle of their centers, and we could see grass-green berries forming in some of them. We watched the flowers and thick canes and mounds of deep green leaves ripple in the wind, showing us the shape of it, and listened to their soft rustling.
Yesterday it stormed off and on all day. In between downpours, the shingles of the neighbor's garage steamed in the hot sunshine, and the wind made the rising mist into tiny whirlwinds.
The abandoned lettuce in the front yard has bolted and bolted and finally bloomed, gorgeous round purple flowers, all one petal, crinkled like ribbons of crepe paper. They open up when the sun shines and at night they twist themselves into little white cylinders, tucked into the terraces of bitter yellowgreen leaves.
I worked from home today, next to a sunny window. The sun shone in my eyes and bees rooted in the blackberry blossoms and there was a sweet breeze that smelled like water and summer and growing things. It rippled the green leafy mountains of the blackberry bushes and then it fluttered the fuchsia silk curtain in the window, and the curtain stroked my neck and shoulder like warm, light fingers.
I was walking down the street after a long, hard day, and I felt exhausted and a little shaky from physical labor, but also content and quiet, and there was a warm, soft breeze on my arms and legs and I felt like I filled up my skin so perfectly.
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AuthorBitter Water
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Archives
June 2019
Categories© Francie Nevill and Every Sweet Thing, 2017.
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