Rituals

My hair has thinned, but it’s grown longer. I run a sheen of oil across the ends after a bath. That warm haze outside is pollen: floating archipelagos of amber, speckled marcasite, frosted orange. From the closet, I pick a blouse of cotton voile so it might breathe, another skin against my skin. A crow flaps up from the blackcurrant bushes: my first letter of the day! Later, the wind lifts the light higher. A green blush deepens on the hillside. Names of the dead sough through the branches, like needles of pine raining through the air.

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.