Hardy tulips in their frivolous, life saving splendor punch holes in the frigid Earth. Life begins with a shriek and ends in a whimper. Scarcity is the justification we use to beat one another to a pulp, and then strain out the personalities and clumps of hair for a juice that will go down smoothly. I’ve always liked my juice pulp free, as though to avoid looking at the once living cells that produced it. In the Garden, a deer delights in the warm friendship of a field mouse. Oranges grow at the periphery. And in this world, people are harvesting one another’s energy like a crop. The tulips sing their purple and yellow song into the purple and yellow birth of Spring.
Day: June 13, 2026
Seasons
The grifting dawn begs for someone to appreciate her slovenly humidity, but none of us have gils and we are tired of swimming through air so thick that you can hear the water say to it, “Damn, you’re fine!” Summer calls me from a landline and asks me to pick up a movie at Blockbuster, and tell her how the children are enjoying their candy cigarettes. The children bob up and down like balloons, high on the thrill of looking adult. Fall is more subdued. He will write to me with a quill pen and say he isn’t coming, Summer has Heaven’s big brass door locked. Then he comes quietly, all at once. The water rains down on rotting leaves and we celebrate our breath, the rattle of our arthritic bones just beginning to clang as Winter caresses the door handle with her bony white hand.
Miniature Moon 