Some Sorrow Attached

Purple flowers and ground-nesting bees.

You trace cancer scars with your middle finger and remember that the rechecks are past due. Things you know you should do and yet do not do.

A string of 90+ degree days means that afternoons are spent indoors which also means that mornings are full of things normally done later in the day. Different schedules; different routines; different allowances and releases.

The garden comes on stronger each day. Can you imagine tending that which is going to be given to everyone else, but not you? It's like that. A gift with joy at it's heart but also, some sorrow attached.

It's bandana season! Working the flower beds yesterday, sweat soaked through my favorite bandana – gray with the word “love” printed on it in a rainbow of colors – and funneled into my eyes with a wicked sting. I've started carrying a dry rag with me to wipe my face on the regular during this heat. How far away winter is in these moments! And yet, here he is in these very sentences.

Tiny white tea roses bloom and they actually do remind me of a small table set for tea with a friend. Lately friendships are so hungry and one has to work hard to judiciously decline to meet. This time of fasting, this time of quieter solitude has a level of incomprehensibility for those who have never thought of it. Post pandemic (is it post yet?) has many frantic to reconnect. How to be available and yet, not, is the current calibration.

Leftover coffee, a train moaning westbound, and mourning doves all ushering in another chance to be lovely in the world.