transitions

I’m no good at transitions. A few days after Christmas, people are ready to move on. They throw out the wrapping paper, they recycle the boxes, they take down the tree. January 23^rd, and I’m still trying to squeeze in every moment, every song, every note I missed.

That cricket. That damn cricket. The last cricket.

He had to be in the house. Sometimes I walked in the kitchen, and he’d stop, and then seconds later he’d start back up. That cheep was always good for a tug, or a smile, somewhere back in the emotional part of me. It was the sound of something vaguely reassuring. I don’t know, a warm muggy night? You go outside and it seems the whole neighborhood is asleep. Maybe a lazy pause in the dark, on the cement step at the end of the walk. He sounded like the moment you were alone with the trees and the stars and the balmy air and the sounds of the last bits of summer.

It’s one of those microseconds when you look up with hopeless hope that somehow there’s still some summer left. And that’s all it lasts. A microsecond.

That’s what blinks are for.