bumblebee

 

It’s quiet.

I mean, so quiet. So quiet you hear yourself think and you get lost in conversation with yourself. So quiet the second you hear anything you jump. But you don’t hear anything. The sun beats down silently, the lake is cool and flat as a mirror. I turn to my other side, laid up on a thick picnic blanket, red and white, on the low hill next to the house. A little house, brick, built before the town came. Before the road was there, before all the activity and movement. And away from the road you feel alone. Not in a bad way. Just alone. Alone and you know it’s only you in the whole world. This a glade of warmth and sunshine. A bee is nibbling and bumbling with a dandelion, wrestling with it for a drop of sweetness. A tiny little thing, buzzing, busy. It doesn’t know me, doesn’t bother to look at me as I look at it. It just takes the daily drop of sugardew and is on its way to the next one. The breeze rustles the edge of the lake like a shirt drying in the wind. I exhale.
Nothing to do, really. I like it like that. I run my hand through the clover, low and lush. I remember the quick sharp tiny jolts of movement you sometimes make in your sleep, twitching like a mouse. Then you’re still again, and I like to hold your hand when we lay next to each other.
I sit up and look over the lake. There’s a single cloud. Hung on an invisible hook, in the lake’s reflection it looks like a cotton ball dropped on blue bathroom tile. It doesn’t move. No wind to blow it. I hear a small splash at the shore, a fish or frog.
I get up. I brush myself off. I put my sandals on and fold up the blanket in a messy roll and give the lake one last long look. Then I walk back, stepping to avoid trampling the tiny little violets and clover blossoms and fairy houses.

The brick house drowses. Quietly, up three steps, and click.