Seasonal Winds

The wind played with the hem of her dress, pulling it back tight against her. The shape of her legs, wiry and slim as cattail reeds, stood out in the folds of black fabric like engorged veins, pumping blood from her pelvis into the loose earth where her feet were planted. She was connected to her world in ways I had prayed for.

She didn’t move when I asked her to move, just kept looking at me, seeing a new piece of me that had been hidden until just this moment.

Now she knows, I thought. Not that she knows everything, but she knows enough. Enough to make her want to run. I’d want to run. I’d want to be anywhere but here.

I saw it. There was a loosening of the tension in her face, and her hands fell absently to pull the fabric out from between her knees where the wind had gathered it. I knew she had decided whether or not she was going to stay, but did not know what her answer would be.

I felt the sun on my balding head and caught small breaths of her soap in the racing wind.

I was unable to remove my eyes from the end of her dress, flapping in the wind like an overenthusiastic tail on a falling kite.