Shorter Days
I dangle by a thread, like the faded crimson and gold leaves withering on the grapevine on the edge of my garden. I pluck one grape and pop it into my mouth. I roll the seeds from cheek to cheek and spit them out. The taste of purple lingers on my tongue. I drank purple with a man—I’ve forgotten his name but not the passion we shared—in front of a blazing blue and ocher fire on an autumn afternoon when I knew who I was.
He held me close when I felt cold. I held him until his last breath. His eyes never left mine until he went still and white. My windows rattled with thunder and muffled my cries the first night alone. He’s never returned. Now shadows swallow his name and face. I shudder and shake off the chill of such muddled midnight memories.
Bask in the moment says the second summer sun. Dusky days lie ahead, so I obey and wallow in her warmth. Her morning rays wake me with a kiss. My mottled, tanned arms prove my love affair with her, and her midday heat paints my cheeks tawny peach. I dread sundown and the winds of winter. They paint my lips and fingertips ice blue. This afternoon’s midday heat caresses me from head to toe.
A lizard tickles my ankle. After last night’s long-awaited rain, she dries at my feet. She blinks. Trust the cycles of the seasons. I warn her about an early frost tomorrow. Lizards drop from trees in warmer climes when a cold snap surprises them. Raining lizards. A chill crawls up my spine. My reptilian friend must burrow deep before her blood runs cold. I refuse to be buried underground.
Who did I ask to sprinkle my ashes on the beach at sunrise? A child whose amber hair shines and swings as she walks. I gave her life in a snowstorm and suckled her on the shortest days and longest nights. Her summer spirit bloomed and filled my autumn and winter days until she grew up and moved away. She comes back. She’s not gone forever. Her name dawns on me—Aurora. Sunshine breaks through the fog of forgetting. I’m a mother. This is who I am.
I breathe deeply. A mix of sweet hay and muck rises from soaked paddocks beyond three gnarled trees with balding heads. Apples cling to their branches, out of reach of the horses’ stomping and whinnying for a treat. The children who ride them must be in school. I pick my way around gopher holes and through grasping grasses to the fence. One gray bay filly flicks her mane. Her velvet nose nudges my hand. Ride with me through fields of poppies and seas of needlegrass. Let the billowing winds lift you up. I shiver with the thrill of jumping ditches as a young warrior woman, unafraid of falling, failing. Our wild eyes meet. This is who I was.
A strange woman with cloudy eyes in a wrinkled mask stared back at me in the mirror this morning. A dimple buried in sunken cheeks reminded me of Mama. I went to call her, to ask her if she knew this woman in my house, but I couldn’t find my phone. Where did it go? I had no idea. My todo list on my blackboard called my attention. Number one on the list: pick whatever’s left in the garden. I remember where the garden is. Under my feet. Solid, unmovable. But things disappear. Things decay.
Abandoned raspberry stalks and dried-up strawberry plants, zucchini’s moldy leaves, stems like mummified arms, offer their regrets. A bee sips from fading coneflowers and black-eyed Susans and buzzes past my ear. Time to rest. Celebrate your last harvest.
Hurrah for peachy roses, quince, coreopsis blooming butter. Thyme, rosemary, and basil flourish despite my neglect. Hurrah for purslane, crabgrass, buckhorn, discarded gophertraps, for diligent diggers of dirt mountains—survivors in this holy place of in between.
The wind picks up. The horses paw the ground to hail me, a warrior at rest on my wobbly bench. I pull the man’s sweater around my bent shoulders and head toward home with a violet sunset complimenting the leaves swirling around my feet. I’ll build a roaring fire, sip ruby wine, and dream of my love and me wrapped in warm embraces. This is who I want to be again.
Published in Capsule Stories Autumn 2022 Edition