This morning birds laughed like hyenas, hot pink pillows sighed, and flowers bloomed on bedsheets. The small cramped hot room fit around me like a too-tight shoe.

Boxes and boxes of unwanted things like 10-year-old taxes that she may need for a green card. His things, waiting for a successful bid by an immigration lawyer. My things wait as well: a rack of dresses, still warm from their last inhabitation; the glowing last sentence of a book; dreams burrowing like fallen comets.

. . .

L and I park our butts under a hilltop oak for quite a view: the New Jersey Turnpike to the left and Harlem to the right and this Wonder Woman themed party below us. Little girls line up to club a starry yellow tiara dangling from a tree limb. Each girl has her own style--wild laughing whaps, small tap tap taps, hard frowning strikes.

We talk about the last five years. Here, this happened to me. There, that happened to you. All that joy and sorrow, all those tears and laughter, compressed into an hour. Hope and Adversity, past and looming.

At last there is an infinitesimal rip, a few hard shiny candy glinting in the grass, fluttering chiffon hems. A woman prises the club from the girl's hands. A man grabs the tiara, inserts his fingers into the hole somebody's daughter had made, tears the pinata open. Candy rain on hot days.

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