Queen Anne's lace

Forty-five and one-half carefully arranged flower petals keep close watch over the happenings of the backyard. There is a pane of glass that keeps it safe from June, and when January comes the children do, too, and with foggy words the mitten fingers write loose and sloppy sentences in unabashed love and wonder. The red head with freckles keeps close tabs from the sidewalk. Sometimes she crosses her fingers and hopes for the best. And that bouquet in the window seems to pine for the sun, its leaves turn heavenly and press against the glass.It's summer, again, halleluj.

In comes that tender hand and fills a pitcher -- twenty-one uneven drops of water miss the mouth and fall into the bottom of the sink, and coalesce in loose formations that look like continents that never were. Giant bodies of water that touch at the tips and wonder how do, and what's new, and how are those lilies? But those words never quite seem to make it; that hand pours that pitcher like April showers over the flowers and sustains them, and twenty-one drops of water slip silently down the drain. And then there's that distance. And then there's that silence, oh, but goddamn for that silence. And turns the world, again, giant continents speeding toward each other with merciless speed, a cosmic collision of tectonic titans, that wonder as they wander how do, and what's new, and how are those lilies?

And then there's forty-six flowers, and gravity tugs a little bit harder and down comes twenty-two uneven drops of water, pooling in the basin and looking upward as the pane fogs up, and here comes those hands, and that girl on the sidewalk -- older already! -- and we'll cross our fingers this time, and you'll look up at heaven, and goddamn for that distance, but we all love you the same.