waiting to exhale

there is this point...this tipping point...where your brain cannot absorb anymore...this world already leaving your heart broken...you enter a state of inertia...you go through whatever routine you have been left with...or moved back to...you wake up...you get dressed...and you blink, are back in bed...repeat...it is almost summer solstice...the long days of late spring and early summer are upon on us...and the maddening news of the nation is a drum beat constant and steady under the drone of your heartbeat...but there are moments...like during a walk last week...when the delicious aroma of a fresh mowed lawn crept under my cotton mask...and I remembered so far back...working in the city in the summer...walking home from the bus stop on Richmond Avenue...hot and sticky...and the sprinklers on pristine square lawns gently waved hello to me...calling to me with each sweaty step...until I slipped off my heels...and walked across a random lawn...baptized in the cool spray and pungent smell of the earth...and all was right...as I take baby steps into the new normal...a work in constant revision and uncertainty...exhaling my fear into flowered cotton...I'll be thinking of the simple joys...watching a blazing summer sun sink into a starry sapphire sky...