—WATCHING THE WHOLE WORLD SHAKE 

                                            Farmer’s Market

      It’s rarely been easy. For months, the rain I love so much has kept falling, with nothing there to hold it, not so much as a spigot or platter or bowl, and so now the food’s grown too big, oblong, misshapen and awkward to carry, especially here, in a small town like this, where everyone notices your baggage. 

      Yesterday, by the organic stand, a random child asked to hold my hand out of the blue, and I almost took it. I thought he was a ghost again, come just to taunt me, but then his mother threw me a look of thunderbolts, and so I scattered toward the shade. 

       Everything’s so green here this time of year. I think they call it verdant, or something French sounding—pretty but peculiar, yet memorable. 

      What I remember now is, there’s always a hollow, a dead echo, a bell that won’t ring right inside all that resplendent color. As if time is actually asking for a refund.

       So, I keep trying to feel grateful for the fair and unfair. For the lettuce and ripe things the earth births. For instance: I looked into a crowded field of corn on the lazy drive back home, clasping your hand, and I was pretty sure I saw our child there, stuck upright on a pole, waving back, while I wasn’t waving at all, when I wasn’t sure I should, or if that kid was even real anymore.