Each slash pine we pass has its own distorted face, sometimes a long jaw, or a pointed, bent nose with deep-set, hooded eyes, where Gigi freezes over the direction the squirrels will take to hide from her ratter temperament.
It’s a humid July morning, so an unexpected sprinkle caused by a gust of wind sweeping through leaves that haven’t yet shed the previous night’s storm is welcome. Gigi’s silky coat is as frizzy as my hair begins to feel. The rain falls softly onto grass that is more clover than lawn. Tiny moths rise away with every step; Gigi’s smaller ones don’t disturb them quite as much. Rotted branches from the heavy winds pierce the ground, the lichen making their texture pop in sea-foam green.
I want to walk in the winds from last night. Lashing hair, low visibility, soaked to my bones, still, yet cold.
And again my thoughts return to you, despite my best efforts to make better use of my brain, to return to the five senses that ought to spark more reason.
The smell of a farm sits just behind a garden gate. Beyond it, a hole that appears to have been dug in wild desperation by some animal hoping to get through, only to meet a foreboding cinder block. A rooster sings out in triumph and peace, I suppose. He has awakened and somehow protected his coop. Gigi barks back at him, impolitely.
I touch a hanging grape leaf and a spider web wraps itself gently around my forearms. I don’t get upset when I walk through them as often as I do. They remind me that I was here first.
We pass a woman who says, “Well, isn’t she the most perky thing I’ve ever seen?” to sweet Gigi, and I look at her; ears back, tail alert, trotting with her tongue out, and dare not think of the day when she isn’t.