pi & anne

Published in contemporary haibun online, issue 21.1

Glowing white below a greyish sky: magnolia buds. Large, spindle-shaped, and vertical. In the week they open, the pink on their petals counts all the more as it almost always rains, and the splendour is less splendid and quickly over; the petals soaked wet. The pedestrians walking past duck under their umbrellas or into their hoods or into their thoughts.

Then all the green, in a shower.

washing up
former sea shells
morning dishesspider spoon sweat in JuneThe sun becomes strong overnight. People pull on thin jackets in the shade and shiver a little; in the sunlight, they throw them on the ground and close their eyes before they are blinded. The skin screams red in the evening. Soon it’s just one, not the other. Then the jacket again, off or on? Mosquito nets…  (I make amental note.)
a paper plane
out of the open windowdebit side daisiesClouds race across the sky, and leaves rustle on the ground, and that’s too much or too little. Some trees cling longer; others, the thirsty ones, are already ahead. There is no stopping here, only a letting go. With the wind come people checking on the old bricks and untied flower pots, that which cannot be controlled. It all expands.not naming how
anybody feels
it novelPeople have speech bubbles in front of their faces with no content, and they tell stories, again and again, cupping hot mulled wine: of snow and frost and sleigh rides, footprints and sun and ice, and it’s not like that anymore, not like then. They tell new stories of what is gone; the world changes.