May you rot in heaven.

When cold water's on her skin
I can feel how long it's been

New World is on repeat in my ears and the wind finally died down. I stand at the top edge of my world. To my right I hear sirens but there's no road there so I know it's my ears playing tricks on me as they always have.

The sun is so bright. So bright I have squinted my eyes up into tiny half-moons, peering out under my bangs, blinded by the rays. I'm almost wishing for rain at this point. That's cracked but so is the ground beneath my feet. I'm out in the grass at sunup watering the carnations and roses (still going strong) and I'm looking at the faded green grass wondering if it really will come back or if somewhere we went very wrong in letting it go with less watering than we should have done. You can't water a lawn this size, you just can't. On the other hand, it would look better green. So I don't know where I'm going with this.

The raccoons took all the grapes save for a bowlful and that was a disaster. The roses had a blight of some kind and the lilacs are so long over I almost forgot about them. The orchard is a shell game, and no one knows where the prize is. It's a relic, a tree ghost-town, a bark army failing to advance against the salt wind.

I got a lot I gotta do
Just to get through the end of the day
It hardly ever happens
But I go to sleep the same anyway

And you can't believe in yourself
You can't believe in anyone else
So why sit and wait
For the new world to begin

We need to get the snow tires out, I think to myself. Jake would have done it by now. They would already be on my car if he were here, just in case. He would have the shovels out and be ready, even though he would stand here every day and remark how mild the day is, every day like clockwork only his clock is broken now and in the process it fucked up my sense of time. I can't tell anymore whether it's nighttime or daytime or dinnertime or time for sleep until I drop. I can't tell if an hour has passed or a minute.

I can't tell you anything but that's okay today because it's beautiful out. So beautiful I can't even see.