HER MOTHER’S HUSBAND
The bloom alone, standing in the turned soil, the stem thin and certain.
I crouched at the edge of the bed.
I looked at it.
The flower before the leaves, the bloom arriving without its supporting structure, into bare ground, on its own terms, on its own schedule, because that was what it did and the doing of it was not conditional on the conditions being right.
I heard steps on the path.
I didn’t look up immediately.
I looked at the bloom.
He crouched beside me.
The close distance of the bed’s edge, the same distance as the first morning we had been here together, the same crouch, the same angle. Two people looking at the same thing.
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