It’s seven o clock and I’m straining noodles in my new kitchen.

Outside, kids are laughing, screaming, shrieking with glee.

They make cannonballs into still pool water, shattering brief moments of stillness with their splashes.

I go to put music on and realize I don’t want any.

I love these sounds.

Writers, has it ever happened that you become someone you’ve written of?

Maybe not wholly. Maybe only for a moment.

At night the sun sets like a blood orange in the sky, bleeding red and rusty over the blue. She watches it out her kitchen window while she washes her dishes, or full heads of lettuce, red leaf and dirty.

Tonight I strained noodles, listened to the kids laugh and later, put the dishes in the sink and walked barefooted out onto my balcony.

Squatting ripped seams into these old jeans, I cradled miniature roses in my palms and pulled them gently from their temporary pots. Separated root from soil. Transplanted. Settled them into a new home in the sun.

The roses are finally planted and she stands back to see them, symmetrical and soldier like, positioned in perfect proportion to each other. She is satisfied, despite her dirt encrusted body. Weeks pass and each evening, she slams out the screen door to see her plants. It surprises her, the degree to which the roses continue to please her, and not because they are so perfectly arranged, but because she’s put so much into their planting. Most likely, had someone else done the digging, wrestling, lugging and sweating it took to get the plants from their individual pots into the soil, they wouldn’t be so lovely. As it is, she waters them daily and watches them with care. They bloom beautifully for weeks on end, changing the timbre of their yellow, from pale to red rimmed.

Maybe that she was part of me. All along.