Dance

This is our home with its tight white bookcases and the pink geraniums that wind around the olive branches. My beloved stands in the kitchen in an orange t-shirt, pitting more sour cherries for clafoutis. This is August in Los Angeles, the air thick and warm, where I sleep on a Sunday afternoon in the garden, a damp towel underneath me to keep me cool, my book collapsed across my chest, the dogs lying in dappled light beside me. These are the naps from which you wake glimpsing the hugeness of life, while the red-tailed hawks circle overhead, when the absolute nature of life and death is revealed, while we are entwined in our own intricate dance, one foot forward, two shuffles backward, always trying to hold between us that perfect, sacred space, the one that both separates and unites us.