Steam heat escapes from my kneecaps as I look out on a tree and contemplate the fragility of its leaves. The fragility of my own knees, knocking in toward one another, naked and beaded with sauna sweat and chlorine. The fact that when I write I sometimes say what sounds beautiful or fragile or profound over what’s true. I wonder if readers can see through that.
I scratch the salt and sand from my scalp, nature’s exfoliators embedded from yesterday’s beach bumming. My sunburn smarts in the warm tub water and the wooden bench I sit upon, my mind still hazy from joint smoke and marine layer or maybe newly lazy from the sizzle and pop of hot rocks and the babble of the garden waterfall. It’s amazing what calm and respite from city sounds can do for the body and mind.
The breeze leads the waxy leaves in a shadow dance against the wooden window slats, where the light is made to look like it’s opening and closing its sleepy eyes. It’s only leaves, breeze, and light, I know, but I am grateful for the personification; it lets me know my thoughts are free, and that I am perfectly at ease.
(2016)
Dipping my toe in