Yesterday a blue ball-point pen exploded in my bag. As I tried to wash out the bag, the ink burst out, falling in thick droplets on the sink, on the linoleum, in between my toes, on my pants, on my fingernails, underneath my fingernails. I scrubbed and scrubbed and still — after cutting the nails — they are outlined in blue, as though I’ve been out digging in a garden with royal colored dirt.
There is a new person walking the median. A woman this time, with a cardboard sign in Spanish.
My window is down. Irish fiddle music blaring.
She is too thin. She is too old for her age.
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“You have a good smile,” she says.
“Que tenga suerte,” I say.
“You speak Spanish,” she says, “Que Dios te bendiga.”
She says sometimes people tell her they’ll give her money if she’ll sleep with them.
The light turns green. We wave goodbye and I go home.
I go on a run around a dirt trail with green grass on both sides. Running in circles, music blasting in my ears, grateful that the sun is hidden by the clouds.
I see a grackle waltzing on the edge. In his mouth are the bright shimmery wings of a blue dragonfly. Dead. Definitely not struggling, or fluttering. Dead.
I nearly run into a little boy being walked by a white dog. I keep going. Sometimes in the pauses between songs, I can hear the soles of my shoes against the dirt, crunching. The sun comes out and sweat beads grow on my forehead.
Overheard at Deep Eddy on Sunday afternoon:
Woman in a lap lane in swim cap: “Do I have children that swim?”
Man, out of the pool: No, do you want to have children that swim?”
Woman: No.
Man (ignoring her response): “We could work something out.”
I am out of bed and my eyes are still fuzzy. I can’t see straight. I need to splash water on my face. The air conditioning is humming. I can tell by the light on the stairs that the sun is shining outside. My stomach is empty. My hair looks like a dancer paralyzed mid-pirouette. The lawn waits impatiently for me to mow it. Maybe there are ripe cherry tomatoes in the backyard, in between all the webs constructed last night by industrious spiders.
