This morning:

What's all this yellow stuff?

Oh, it's sunshine!

//

Sam hurt a hind paw. I was so tired, I would have used his injury as an excuse to not go walking, but the husband wanted to walk the woods, and then around town, fists wrapped around ice cream cones. He fed Sam his cone.

The woods and the grassy areas around town and the stone walls of the castle and star fort were lively with flowers: marsh marigolds, cuckoo flowers, buttercups, clover, ivy-leaved toadflax, forget-me-nots, blue bugles, vetch, bluebells, daisies, rue-leaved saxifrage, columbines, stitchwort, cow parsley, germander speedwells, wild mustard, more.

All last week a void had formed inside me, for I was so intent on work after the wallpaper above our bed flopped down; how I want to move out, how we must leave this house (and the mother-in-law), how the only way out is through work. By the end of the week I was nothing but emails and invoices and bank statements.

So on our walk, I said the names of the flowers aloud, each word like a bell ringing in the void, drawing colour, shape, and texture into a body more recognisable to me.

<<