Monday, February 28, 2022
Lilacs
Lilac Lady wants to talk.
So we sit in Jennifer's "room" as wind whistles through its black branches. It was built from hurricane debris, like all our rooms.
LL enters, first asking Jen's permission.
Once in, she sits on a milk crate, her lilac parka, the petals in the outside wind landing on our "house." All of an aromatic piece.
She starts in: "I need to tell you because you can't know it: this is an entirely magic time! Your rooms and rules, feeling for each other'll never come again!" I see even now our upturned, puz-zled faces. "And Indian Charlie, you have his...? Don't lose...!"
Jen has to run home and pee, so we can't stay there. I catch grasshoppers for Indian Charlie's turtles. He draws and shades a pencil sketch for me of an old cowboy. Oh the covered porch of his big rambling house!--it a few months later fills up with snow.
I much later marry Jen and she drinks herself to death.
The Lilac Lady's right: that time never came again.
Charlie's sketch tossed out...somehow.
Small museum in Butte has a few.
I can't go that far.
