Fishing and Flowers

She is sitting on a humid swing.  The air is full of cicadas and a smell of white flowers.  Her body rocks in the gentle seat.  Back and forth.  He is on his way home.  She hopes he is in a happy mood, but it's a shallow attempt at conjuring joy.  The truth is, it only affirms her expectation of his state of arrival.  Years it has been and always she finds herself trapped in the waiting.  Driving down 465 without air conditioning, imagining a lake and the fishing boat and the bass bigger than his arm, he pushes aside the tone of voice he knows is waiting for him.  Meek (when did it become so falsely demure?), concerned-sounding (when did she think this expressed love?), imploring (at what point did he stop talking to her?)

The weight of summer quiets everything.  All living beings within a ten mile radius, cease to emote, drop their patterns for this one moment each day.  It is a dense twilight, so big it cannot be measured in units of time.  Mostly it passes unnoticed, in fact the very nature of its existence is ephemeral, impossible - a snowflake in August.

On this particular day, high above them, a swooping gull split the snowflake with an eager angle of flight.  The gesture sent one half through the window of his car and the other piece down past the willow tree from which the swing hangs.  A tiny ice crystal landed on her nose, slid down the nape of his neck.  On this particular day, the invisible moment was mutually recognized.

The meat of their thoughts did not disappear, but all the residue - weeks, decades, generations of ways of thinking, washed through them.  He continued to drive, she, to swing.  Fishing was there, the heady scent of a garden, but nothing more.  Nothing else pressing against the moment, twisting it.

She gets up from the swing.  He pulls into the driveway.  They look like children.  She grabs a lemonade popsicle and runs to meet him.  He gets out of the car grinning.  She is tiny next to him.  He lifts her up under her armpits and licks the frozen treat in her hand.  “Fishing?” he asks her.  She wraps her legs around his waist like it’s a tree, kisses him on the forehead.  “Yes.”