April 2024

There’s something clumsy about life these days. Like we’re all slow to wake up. There’s drool on your chin and the sun is a little too bright. 

More days than not, the girl puts the kettle on and walks away without making her tea. There’s old business happening, new again, and worth our attention. Mother bird comes back to the porch. There are mushrooms, and wild garlic, and knotweed to pull up from the river. And tea again. And poetry. It’s all the same old new ancient magic. 

It snows a final time, just a dusting quick goodbye, like she forgot her keys, wanted to kiss our cheek. Like she knows we’ll be different next time she sees us. We will be. 

We’ve been talking about haircuts. My noble landlady, hands on hips, talks about shaping up the ordinal trees. They come trim the bushes while the girl is away. She pouts when she gets home, like she had been looking forward to running her fingers through it all. It feels good. Different. Lighter. It’ll grow back. While the girl fights her split ends with a cracked comb on the porch, pulling strands so straggly even mother bird is uninterested, I shake down the pollen from the overgrown branches and impart, We’re ready for a change. We’re ready. and It’s already here. 

I hide the scissors from the girl until her sister can come and do it properly in the kitchen chair. That was the day of the eclipse, and I was crawling with people, a kid on every floor looking for mischief, or, preferably, matchboxes. 

When the lights go out outside, they’re at the table, unconcerned, plotting where to hunt for frogs next. 

I am full of guests lately, and the guests are full of food, and the food is full of the first warm weather green hope. We’re alive. We’re alive. We light candles in cakes and sing about it. We pass the babies arm to arm and sing about it. We stay up through the night, read to each other,  dance at 4am in the dark living room, finding old feelings in new music, and we sing about it. 

It’s already here, 

the apple house