The Endings [26 Jan 2004|06:31pm] 

I'm sitting at my desk with the window open. The glass pulls 
back away from the side to the right of my head. Warm air smelling 
of earth and rain is drifting in and mingling with the stale 
coffee miasma of my work space.

Just outside my window, a story up from the earth, are the lifeless 
branches of some thin white-barked tree. Squirrels have been 
climbing higher and higher these past few days, searching for the 
remaining berries taht cling to the branch tips in dark clumps. At 
this height, the branches sway dangerously in the wind and I worry 
when I see a small life clinging to the whipping wood.

Beyond the windowpane tree rises a Florida pine, standing a story 
above the opposite two-story apartment building. All the windows 
are dark at this hour - the cusp of the work and the play. The thick 
green canopy of needles is diffuse in the graying evening sky and 
soon it will blend altogether into the empty houses and the empty sky.

Purple is cooling into black and my heart constricts. I've never been 
able to accept the endings.