The flowers – well, really you’d call them weeds – flowed out from the door and across the imaginary meadow. On days when they were long they’d move like an ocean under the eye of the breeze. On dry days they’d crack, brittle and broken, a poor man’s Sahara. In winter you could stand on the porch and it was as if the sun imaginary was the thinning scalp of an old woman, the snow barely punctuated by ghostly hairs.

Stand on that porch, look over that imaginary meadow, ask yourself the question: who will be coming over that meadow for you? Who won’t ever come over that meadow for you? Who will walk about halfway across, and then abandon their effort as the wind paws their clothes and bites at their lips and nose. Who runs in circles as if writing words in the tall weeds spreading out from the porch