At the edge of the dining room table, between the aloe plant splayed like an upside down octopus and the tangled Pothos, sit seven objects grouped together: mug with paint brushes and pens, wallet with credit card on top, key fob, squeaker, sunglasses, earbud case, house keys – a still life, my life.

The morning colors! The morning colors! The morning colors! A blue so clear and light – oranges so vibrant that the word feels too flat and singular – maybe it’s all the fruit (peaches, oranges, tangerines). Clouds roiled with grays.  And later: whites, golds, yellows, and silver. The morning colors! The morning colors!

It was dark. Now it’s pale and light. My fingers sting from the cold air walk. Jacket weather – this again. The dog shakes a spindly toy squeaky chicken with long and crinkly legs. His play is violence. A reminder that in the calm of dawn, somewhere, something is being torn apart.

Rain. The wind isn’t strong. It blows and rustles enough to be heard. This is the first day of fall. Autumnal equinox – two words that sound better when one pays attention to the syllables or lingers in the half-light / half-dark space between them… words falling and tumbling like the morning wind.

It’s dark. There are no morning noises and I’m waiting for the dawn. When the hum of the refrigerator clicks and stops, its presence (absence) becomes clear. Through the trees just beyond the parking lot, red taillights at the donut shop – different morning, different routine. I am struggling to fill this space.   

Between the aloe plant’s tentacles, two skinny stalk mushrooms sprout. I imagine being small. I imagine being under them. Pleated whitish-green button caps the color of glow-in-the-dark moons unfurl high like canopies. I think of the cool shade they would cast – how they might keep me dry in a pouring rain.

The world was busy and rush-hour loud. Dusk waited patiently for quiet before opening the door to night. The lawnmower next door stopped, the traffic on the thoroughfare hummed but no longer raced muffler loud and engine screaming. Even the sirens finished putting out their distant fires. Darkness and quiet, cool September.

The dog nudges my hip with his nose. He sniffs the air and whines. His wagging tail whips me as he walks away. Two birds are talking somewhere out of view. The backyard maple, maybe three years old, is browning at the top. Sunlight cuts shadows on the deck. The dog waits.

Ground fog hangs over a wide and weedy field gone feral. The sun glow orange rises over the distant hills. Two jays scream and chase a cooper’s hawk and high above in the thinning blue, two contrails form an x. This is the sky-stretched flag of departures – a nation going somewhere else.