\ lapis lazuli

I pulled the first plum from the tree today, knew it was green, spit it out, satisfied with the halting progress of summer, closer to its end than its beginning, still with some things left to do.

So I ran.

I finished at mile 13 point ONE, along the Western Chehalis Trail. The markers are bluebird boxes. The only obstacles the occasional hazelnut husk, thorny and wispy with the work of Stellers Jays, and, coincidence of coincidence, I return to the tiny hamlet of Rainier at 7:20, and after a few minutes see Alex drive by on her way home from work.

I call and she pulls in. What is all the white stuff? she asks, kissing me firmly on the lips and hold it, hold it, hold it, now somehow closer back to the beginning, still with much to do. I don't know, I say.

I remember the week before, after my run I kept looking in the kitchen, in the bathroom for a spilled bottle of household cleaner, the air heavy with ammonia. It was me. And in the car I could see the whiteness more clearly, and I rubbed it between my thumb and forefinger, and it was like a powder, and it was salt, like the table salt we used in Romania, not of grains but of dust, and powerful in small pinches, and I was elemental, all my minerals from years of lapidation burdened by their enclosure.

And I want to move, my feet still are, in fact, as she drives off, muscle memory, and whereas before I longed for large spaces and acres of land, now I only want to teach my children the value of very small places, and I will move into a tiny craftsman, and we will decorate it with wee tapestries, and shot glasses for beakers. We will nurture Herb Robert and persicaria and other microscopic flowers scorned as weeds and trampled underfoot by big, big strangers, look within and speak in quiet voices. The miles ahead of me and the things still left to do and clearing my head of this lifetime collection of pretty rocks is all the space I need.