Faint Traces of Paisley

Rain making distant mountains harder to see. So this is the new country. I run harder than I expect or intend, anger in my chest at imaginary grievances involving law enforcement, as if certain errors had gone further sideways than they did. My cousin is tired of waiting and I cannot explain he doesn't need to - I'm okay, not ready, et cetera - but there he is, loyal and bored, altogether familial. Flocks of grackles diving and swooping in distant skies leaving faint traces of paisley in mind. Would you dissolve if you could like salt sprinkled in water. When you talk I cannot help but listen, and when I listen to you talk something inside me expands, opens, gives welcome, and I am tired of using any other word but love to explain this. Chrisoula texts a grocery list, including code I haven't seen in years. Word for word. Pumpkins and gourds line the front porch, left out until they begin to decay, and then we toss them into the compost out back. What is picked at, nibbled on. Inside the crow's cry was another crow, silent and attentive. There is, you see, a space beyond death, and it is where we all live. Grinding wheat, grinding cannabis buds, grinding hips kissing, all of it intensifying, bringing about time in which we are lost. I chose a certain flower as a child and half a century later my father died, worrying had he forgotten anything. How the light changes here so often. How it takes so little to be happy in the end.