East South East

at the garage sale I chose a light
blue bandana marked
free

The second bloom on the rose bush will open this weekend while we are away. Shy roses and other expressions of June that reduce me. At the grocer an older man winked and cajoled as I hustled through the parking lot crosswalk: slow down there, young lady! He swallows me.

Of all the ways home – yours.

Water, blank in expression and a scratch of smoke in the faraway hills . . .

After dawn the wind will spin off the lake and her glinting will wave its serrated net over the ripples. Blueberries and dragonflies all day. One wonders if there will be a time when the body is all she'll have left. What then? Church windows, in all their glory, pray for the liberation of a stone's throw. That's the way I see it anyway.

Peach tea, cold. We drive east and south and east again, skimming around Lake Erie. These miles pulsating so close to Ashtabulah. She tells me her nightmares and it makes me feel like praying for the first time in years. Praying in, not to. Our absence multiplies itself and even though I have no idea what that means, my bones believe in it.

Mailboxes covered in clematis and morning glories. White picket fences wobbling. Rabbits and summer are hungry enough to devour what I have planted. This is the proof of the dissolution and the atonement of now. Forget the world. Forget me. Because you are, all can be.