This sunlight on my closed eyes paints everything pink. I imagine a wall of pink and orange gradients. I imagine blackbirds mid-flight stark against the colored wall. Somewhere there’s a sky of blue and sidewalks the color of sand. A vendor wheels his metal lunch cart clanging over dips in the road.

Honeysuckle Sundays drip sweet sunshine in overgrown breezeways. Everything is coming up golden yet I can already taste fall’s brittle scarecrow. Today the corn is sweet. Whisper in the wind (today the corn is sweet). My shoes shuffle, my feet the street.  We wear each other down in this slowly dying town.

In the morning sun, a squirrel hangs upside down from a bird feeder. She spills seeds onto the ground where two squirrels forage beneath. Some would see this as cooperation – evidence of a higher order. I feel smug in recognizing it as little more than opportunity – calling it by its rightful name.

In the hour just before midnight the music plays. This could go on all night. Sweet soul, saucy groove, the evening spools. Together, we’re hemmed in like the hard plastic cassette case of a mix tape. Bass drops, songs fade, this is the winding road to Reno. The stars are always there.

It’s 5 am. The thinnest slice of a curved moon hangs above the silhouetted trees. A robin talks and tweets her head silly. She has news to spread. The horizon begins to blush – barely able to keep its secrets, the embarrassment of riches it’s about to usher in. Sky lightens. World awakens.

A mourning dove coos her evening song. Everything grows tired: the fading light, the snoring dog, the head nods towards an open book. The cursor blinks and winks waiting to be fed, the cellphone buzzes with text notifications. The electronics are insomniacs. I whisper to them sweetly, listen to the dove’s lament.

I left the bar strutting past the paraplegic – self-conscious, ashamed, and almost proud of the way my legs worked. Outside, a driving rain and cold wind straightened my back the way one stiffens at the first touch of waist-high, cold ocean. I’m drenched. He’s still at the bar next to his wheelchair.

This deck of words has two jokers. I shuffle syllables, deal descriptions. A bird cuts across the sky. A cardinal as red as a heart sits on a clubbed fence post. A pair of squirrels folds leaves into the shape of diamonds under a straight tree. The world is flush. I say hit me.