Grass

This summer, every time I turn the faucet, I think of the clean gushing through the pipes. Headlines breathe on me like a close stranger, on a rush hour train. I work from home and work from home. Stuck in the heat, I fix my gaze out the window on how only the dry grass changes color – pink at dawn and dusk. Grey in the darkness. Otherwise, yellow. A woman said that solitude and freedom are the same. Across the street there is a field where once a house stood before it burned. I see its absence in the tall stems that take over. I call it a field, which is generous – though what else can I do but give? I do not have to see my daughters to know they are there, growing. Who would think to make something so plain? My solitude is like the grass. Its shape stays on the knees of my children. I leave the room. I walk across it, barefoot, and crush a bee. I feel nothing, and then every blade.