For all its dimness, damp, and grey: winter is the time for Satsumas. I can’t imagine how summer heat might lie dormant in a gnarled rind long enough to bring me sunshine in dead winter. Oranges are not meant for cans, just like glaciers aren’t meant to be captured in disposable plastic bottles.
The winter is not frigid, merely damp, and seemingly perpetual for people like me who live in the moment and can’t plan for practical matters. I am thinking of joining the military; perhaps I will learn structure. My food would be canned. I would never see Satsumas appear in the store to gentle my winter. I would learn how not to think.
The books I have borrowed I am returning. The nagging, hungry itch for more data became a revulsion when I read what I realized were opinions. What are facts anyway when several people can prove they are all right about the same thing? It’s approaching truth, but I have no stomach for anything but simplicity. In the summer, maybe I won’t take issue with stodgy old-men writers. In the summer, I will dig my toes into the dunes. In the summer, I will lie in the crisp yellow grass and bask on the baked-hard ground. The Satsumas planned for winter: they tucked away a bit of sun and hid it in a thick warty skin. I could learn from Satsumas.
My mother dreams of falling. She dreams it again and again. Her hands shake when she speaks. She’s not-quite fifty. She lives in the heat and cares for her parents. They must think her dutiful. She helps them keep their pills straight. Grandma has always had to keep her pills straight: she had a pink box of neat rows: each little compartment breaking the day into doses. I wonder at her drug habit, and how it carried her through each day like a best friend might hold your hand as you leave the hospital one step at a time.