the walls more sparse, the blankness between frames wider than before. I’m always searching for this quietness, though when I find it I rush to fill the dead air with my breath. I’m feeling alive in a mossy boulder kind of way. A softness, a beating heart. Milo rises abruptly to pant and bark at the nothingness. Notifications go off, the telephone, a puzzle. Is that pollen, a wispy cotton ball floating above the power line? The swamp cooler’s cover, shredded by wind and hail, sitting in stillness, undressed. Here comes the sprinklers out front, the overgrown grass causing a mist more than a spray. Are all things in their places? A binder full of necklace charms, seashells in a mesh zipper bag. It’s okay if the glass chips, just put it in the back of the cupboard. I dreamt of this day, so unremarkable, the hum of a jetliner passing above. I dreamt of the roses, their thorns, a blood too thick to drip. I, a pair of cupped hands my body rests inside, a hammock. And the leaves only touch when the wind tells them to dance, as if to say “I love you I love you my neighbor!”
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