The morning comes again, the way it always does: too early, and I am heavy limbed among the flannel sheets. Sprout is kicking next to me, awake with the first light and sucking on his hands. He knows all the secrets of delight. I have yet to arrive entirely in my lumbering body: in the tendons that connect my bones, in my soft breasts and legs and heavy thighs. I have forgotten much.
In the shower, the hot water becomes the day’s first blessing. The soap is soft. The tile slick with steam. My feet slip a little on the enamel tub and I begin to remember who I am. I turn to face water streaming down and let the day fall towards me as it may: to-do lists, dreams, wet hair clinging to my cheeks. Outside the fields are full of crows and starlings among the stubble of the corn. Frost makes things silver and white. The sky is overcast and hints at snow. Today I have today.
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At the café, a double latte with whole milk a graffiti of froth; and they are at the table across the room again, shoulders hunched and frail; his skin the sallow color of dried corn. I watch her rise to get more cream. She brings it to him, then puts her arms around his shoulders. Hesitates there. I see her look away.
Today it is this: what we have ends, begins, ends again, always. And when it’s over, all that we have becomes a fragile calliope of winding song, a muse, a promise, a thin silver thread connecting us to the other side.
How we pray doesn’t matter. Kneeling doesn’t matter. Pressing palms together doesn’t matter. What matters is the way the trees have lost their leaves now and stand stark and surprised, yet their stilling sap continues to hold the memory of bud, of newly furling leaf, of quivering branch lifting toward the summer sky.
Why do we hesitate at the doorway of our hearts, becoming distracted with the simple frail shells of things the way they are just now?
He points to the bulletin board at the door and awkwardly knocks the sugar on its side, and she is there, already gathering the sweetness with a napkin. Brushing the grains into the trash. Leaving. Today she goes ahead of him, pressing her fingers to her lips. He follows after, a newspaper folded under his arm. Today they have today.
