Come What May

The tomatoes are rotting on the side board and the lettuce lies limp in the spinner. The smell of rotting fruit and vegetables has become the smell of home, greeting me with its moist, fecund promise whenever I knock the snow from my boots and push through the aluminum storm door.

Daylight on snow is too harsh, borne only because the geese must be fed. Feed, and water, and return to the house. I shove past kitty, pour a glass of well water into my grimy cup and shuffle toward the brown tufted couch and the grey woolen blanket, my living room cocoon.

Today, I will lie here protected under a glaze of blanket. I do not care to watch the sun trace its path across the kitchen window, for there is a storm cloud below the horizon, waiting to drift into view, changing the colour of the light with its warning, the pressure of it felt in the unseen air, and my mind spinning, spinning, spinning, caught in a loop of its own making.

© 2004 Don Mackenzie