June.

From writer's group prompt

I am in Colorado with my mother, who is resting now in our hotel. She is healing from spinal surgery and we are here to bury her mother. I am here to open her water bottle and pull up her leggings, rub arnica on her shrinking limbs, cut her burger, make her laugh. I tell her how wonderful she is. How proud we all are.

My burning eyes left Santa Fe at sunrise, and at 2 o’clock I stood in the fluorescent community room and spoke into a microphone. I wore a grey cotton t shirt, jeans that were rain-soaked from the night before at the Fruit Bats show.

I said how lucky I feel that so many of my stories of my Grandma are inappropriate jokes. I laughed. I ate a cupcake, likely covered in old person dust and cough, and tried not to look too long at anything. The crusty forehead scabs. The swollen legs. The wheelchairs. I searched deep inside, found the calm to gather and to be quiet. The Pastor played her favorite song. Talked of her love of dogs and cats and babies. Her sparkle. The way she was everyone’s favorite.

We miss work, deadlines, appointments. We miss each other. My kidneys hurt from the misoprostol last week. Did you know that there is so much blood? Drip dripping from my limbs. Do you know that you will live through anything?

I know that June is still an island. I can see it, shimmering in the sun of solstice ahead. I can see it in our plans, in the way things always open up. The way we all take care of each other. The way there is joy and tears over bagpipes in Boston, Pride parades, NBA, and Japanese fans eating Texas steaks for the first time. The world is so big and small.

I drive to Walmart in the early morning for supplies to clean out the nursing home room. The rain here smells like the ocean. The gas station girl interrupts her rap song to tell me “You have a blessed day now, okay?”

Everything is an ocean and an island. Especially in June.