7:30 am. Tuesday.
It seems I have forgotten speech. I go out into the dim, soft early, floral and rank both. I step into it, push through it. A sudden crowd, parade-like on this single stretch of sidewalk, the woman with her two loaf-of-bread dogs, the older couple in their matching -- pale grey t-shirts, pale blue pants, white sneakers, shoulder to shoulder walking, the ginger cat on the mulched incline, spectating, and me. Pushing up, gliding down. The walk offers no feathers, no stones, only stray brick and slivers of styrofoam cups, squashed bugs, one dove landed. I pass the dead thinking of nothing but mosquito netting, not a word of greeting until it's too late and all that is behind me and I am in the final descent. Called out then by the dim of a grassy drive slipping under the trees, not the shade of sunny days, but the deep interior of undergrowth in overcast, a recognition, how I carry it with me always, the pathos of non-belonging, longing and patience, how it billows in folds over my shoulders and down my back, that rippling as I push up the last hill before home.