July 4th, 2019

           A very tall oak bow stretches the length of many feet to touch a palm tree. Ferns and moss cover it like it is the earth, and when the breeze blows, its curly tendrils sway, begetting the sound of my grandmother’s wind chimes before a storm. And though I write in observation from my second story window, the bow is taller still, its sibling bows above it reaching up into the canopy, thin here, where the road curves through. 

  It’s the 4th of July today and I am looking at the sky through the glass of my second story window. Blue behind the white heat, humid clouds, airy, like a hot breath of steam. A giant bouncy slide has been erected in the field beyond the mailboxes by the lake and the American flag that I always stop to admire on my walks, and it makes me think of what I thought of such things like giant bouncy slides when I was a child, mostly that they were a rare chance to grow very tall all of a sudden. I do not wear my skirt with the stars and stripes today, partly because I did on Sunday, and partly because I’m not in the mood. This feeling is a gateway to another feeling, shrouded behind kinder thoughts, too willing to move aside to expose the less kind ones in the shadows. Thought that is not what I think on, on this day of Independence. 

        At the end of my morning walk, I thought of the men who had gathered together in treason to sign a document, launching a war that was long and hard and like a nightmare. If they could know what they did, though I think they did know for what they sacrificed. And though I am young, my heart wants many things. Shall I tell you what they are?