The wind came on hard so of course I had to go out in it: why does being out in extreme weather make us feel so alive (because at any moment it feels we may not be)? Is it really the edge of death where we feel so alive, on the cusp? All the blooms came down off the magnolia tree: white, broken cups with their legs in the air, not even starting to brown, on their backs in the grass. I opened all the windows though it was getting cold so I could hear the birds, imagined the dampness coming through the windscreens like a spray, a fine mist.

The dog curled into a ball and hid her face, the spaces between the leaves against the sky got bright with a pale light that made strange shapes…

And the grass was a green so deep, thick, and lush but needed cut.

Charlotte’s teeth are yellow but her hair is long and strawberry blond, her eyes blue, a dusting of freckles on her nose and cheeks…and we regard her with a sense of loss, for how quickly Lily slipped out of being a girl somewhere between child and woman, really nowhere near either, but way in between…and though it’s raining Charlotte talks me into horseshoes, something we’ve never done together in all these years…our hands muddy from the sand and wet grass, to bed well past nine, up before six…night riddled with thunderclaps and the dog nervous at 1 AM, outside on the patio with her barefoot in the depths of the damp, green night, awash with whatever odd visions came before, and hoping they’d return.

Categories: musings, parenting, prose

Tags: pacific northwest, parenting, postaday, prose, William Pearse writer