...roses grow

[thanate]

Now is the time for lying on the floor, still and silent, away from the incandescent sun and the intermittent wind, out of the reach of biting insects and piercing thorns. Rest for the eyes, the sinuses tight and pinched with indrawn pollen, the muscles that have forgotten how to move through rough terrain, wielding shovel and screen. Now when the brain is drugged with the day past, weary of thinking, of enjoyment and frustration, of failing to speak to those who do not speak to me, of struggling to hear over wind and weariness. Now my time is my own, and I have not yet come to the end of the things I still wish to do with it, unrolling before me in infinite possibility of wants and needs, cans and shoulds, coulds, what-ifs, and might-bes. But in this now I savor my little space of freedom in idleness and a handful of words. It is all I have. I may yet muster my strength to lay in a little stock against the wear of the infinite future, or perhaps I will lie here, still and small, watching time flow over me in lazy instants, one eyeblink melting past barely distinguishable from the next.