ENTANGLED

These days I feel like being with people, but not like being with the people I know. This afternoon I was supposed to go with my new roommate, Meredith, and a company of strangers on a picnic, but it was cancelled in the night by…

Rain, blasting out of the sky when I woke, like the jet of a fire hose trained on our roof. Now it’s quiet, except for the trickle of rivulets down the sloping path behind the back porch. A slatted wood screen, stapled on a wooden frame, runs along the path and forms a flimsy stockade between this property and the next. Evergreen branches, heavy with rain, hang over the top from the other side, like children’s arms dangling over a banister. Raindrops are glistening like budding icicles on spidery twigs that have shed their leaves. Gazing out of my large triptychal window, I make believe I’m in the midst of a wood.

I roll down the matchstick blinds and crawl beneath my embroidered Indian bed cover. Through an opening in the blinds, I watch the undulating treetops. Entangled in those branches, I begin and end my dreams.