so love comes easy
The Meeting Place. THIRTY-ONE.
The moment before a downpour, the sky droops with promise, prayers poured in from all that thirsts, the penitent ripe for a cleansing as seeds dream of putting down roots.
The woman feels the closeness of rain as she stands at the woodshed. Any minute now, she thinks, her gloved hands clutching at corners of split oak that she knows was cut by a drinking man, his face speckled red, his fingers like raw bratwurst, his belly heavy. Not all his cuts were clean, clumps of fiber peeling from some logs. She wondered about him, if he was a fair fellow. At three-fifty a cord, delivered and dumped in these rural climes, she didn’t know. Back in August when he arrived that Sunday afternoon, he spoke of a ’70s band he would see that night at a nearby casino. Time keeps on slippin’ slippin’ slippin’. . . .
She didn’t spot a mentor in him, that’s for sure. She had been on the lookout for mystics and muses, guides for her journey, and had suspected one or two. But she knew well enough to wait, to wonder, to wade like a novice toward strangers when Who are you? wasn’t a question on anyone’s lips up in these hills. No sense getting in too deep.
So much had changed: setting, plot, character. The suspension bridge to her past was nailed to nothing. You know that truth when you get there. The past is, in fact, prelude. Make of that what you will.
What she wants next is to live with enough foresight to have tea in the cupboard, food in the pantry, to get the wood in before the rain, to paddle toward those who smile. To keep things simple so love comes easy.
The Meeting Place is a jigsaw of fictional vignettes hosting several female characters destined to cross paths. The series began with The Meeting Place. ONE. (May 12, 2022)
