[Written on August 4th]
At the cottage. The smell of lingering dust, memories of mornings in the desert. No rain for six weeks.
Reading “Grief is the thing with feathers” by Max Porter. It is short, so simple – and carries the heaviest on its shoulders. Death, sudden, to be left behind. It is a feeling and the words bring it out, so carefully that it is barely noticeable. It is beautiful. And funny. In the difficult moments, the perspective of a crow might be just what is needed.
Thinking: The grief felt over yellow edges on birches in early August. I need a crow for that too.
Later, sitting on grandma’s old bench, sketching flowers. (Maybe the start of something, the tingle from the promise in a new project.) The sky darkening behind the quivering aspen leaves, contrasting in shades of purple with the gray-green trunks. Wind, gathering speed in the crowns of the hill-top oaks.
A drop, a flash, rumbles in the distance, and the sky opens.
After, the stillness. Air heavy with earth, sweet. After-drops falling from leaf to leaf, like sighing. A rainbow behind the hazel hedge.
Katja Malmborg 