Peaches, tomatoes, watermelon*

This post is a memory play.

In it I will recall all the things I can remember from the recent past, in no particular order. I’m a bit disordered, after all and maybe this will help.

The crack in the windshield, after the pop of the rock that shot from oncoming traffic.
Birthday balloon fight and complaining downstairs neighbors.
Tiger Barbs swimming in a tiny school all their own.
The sound of persistent rain, current rain, future rain.
Blue cheese on a medium steak.
Incense blown hard into this room by a fan, too sweet for me says husband, but I’m alone now so it burns, a gift from an almost stranger at a climate change march that took place either yesterday or two years ago what is time?
Corn, corn, more corn, the lack of corn, villages of rows of houses where corn used to be who makes up the names for these places?
Rainbow in the sky on hour seven of the twelve hour drive.

I can go on.

A flat tire on hour four of the twelve hour drive. The service station beside the Mennonite house, a place where the sounds of a piano wafted out and into the sun — clothes drying on a line, ombréd by color, and a sixteen-year-old named Steve Miller changing the tire while my kids tossed gravel down a ravine. The way his dad pronounced the s in Illinois.

Remembering I should’ve texted before so that I could’ve spend more time.
A hummingbird in the cut flowers.
The second container of french onion dip.
Reading, standing in the pool, in the sun, moving to adjust my own comfort.
Laughing pouring the last of the white wine into a small glass.

Pretending with a friend in a minivan that everything is normal, but also crying into my mask because everything is awful sometimes, even though the kids just keep growing and losing teeth and keeping me tender, yearning, raging, heart-breaking for people hanging on the edges of the wings of planes, oh this is nothing, nothing, but I do feel like the rain comes when things need growing, drowning, breaking, but please, no one hurt. Not like the last one. Or the one before that. Or the one before you were born.

Popsicles in the backseat of the Volvo — Dua Lipa and dancing into a good parking spot because it’s August in the city and we’ve got nowhere else to be but here.

*Should I shift over to Substack? Would you care to join me?

Comment here or text me to tell me what you think or to just say “hi.”

I love you, I do. Thank you for reading me.