Almost a Conversation

The sound of a trilling bird fills my mouth. It tastes like raspberries ripening in the sun with a hint of the prickly branch. My taste buds are tickled to the point of irritation by this truculent trill. They rise up, swollen pink beads on the tip of my tongue.

The stubborn creek beyond my back fence crinkles like cellophane in my eyes. Its sonorous rustle is a glare I dare not stare directly at. Soggy mosses soften the crackling of what I’ve know to be a giggling brook. I squint to see the water diminish in my draughted part of the world. As the water plods away I hear its steps receding as if down a long interminable hallway.

Doors open and close in my house. Clunk and thunk and creeeek-kakung. A window is opened, then closed. Shhhh-shunk. I feel these comings and goings on the surface of my skin. Like the tiny palpations of my infant nephews’ fingers. Little digits cause the hair on my legs to rise. Bowl scraping and card shuffling and toilet flushing massage muy scalp and scapula and ear lobes.

A distant truck has now neared and backed itself into my left nostril. Beep, beep, beep. Expert parking. Fits into the space just right. It’s noxious fumes, ancient dinosaur blood, are a bad-omen incense. But I get used to it, breathing deeply in and out. Vroom, vroom. The dirty rig revs its engine, then cranks its cranks into gear and peels its way out with a sneeze.