buy strawberries

The atmosphere was all wrong.
The wind was suddenly laced with prickles of cold when she left. She left the door unlocked-- that happens when you leave your key behind-- allowed dried leaves to blow inside the door, the way I've seen them where the wind has caught them on a little tornadic twirl around the front stoop. She took the strawberries, goddammit.

I had to go to bed without knowing if I was still alive.

Thank God my niece's drawing of rocket-day was still on the refrigerator.

I ran my fingers along the waxy ridges and valleys of crayon-- the blue, green, purple, yellow tracks of them. I could nearly smell the whole 64-count box of them. That scent that has become instinctual, programmed into my memory slots where drawing implements and tools reside.

I talked on the phone to my brother, my aunt who told me to come "home"--Connecticut-- "to hell with that girl," she said. "Ed died a long time ago."
Ed was her deceased husband.
"I missed him at first, but, hell, I don't need him."
Yeah, I could see the correlation.
I called my mom and fell asleep as she talked. The dial-tone scared the crap outta me at 2 a.m.
Alive.

I had made it a practice to eat a strawberry each night. The sharp acid/sweet opening of my tastebuds was proof of being alive. Just that.
"Am I alive tonight?" I eat a strawberry.
"Do strawberries taste like anything on another galaxy?"
A valid question.

Back to "You don't need her." My aunt drinks Miller Lite. She's nearly 90. I liken it to the gasoline that keeps a decent engine running when the body is pitted and flaking apart as it runs along the roadway. Aunt Evelyn would be an old blue Buick. She might have had one of those, even. She could cook the hell outta some fresh crab, too. As long as she was alive, the possibility existed that she could heat up a pot of boiling water again, herd my sister and brother and I out onto her dock to lure crabs with lumps of fat tied in twine, and finish the day stewing the catch into a rich crab sauce for the next week.
The potential for her to do great things.

The house didn't feel like it had with Lil gone.
"Too big?
too small?
Not right at all," like some silly kid's rhyme.

I think a space can be like that. Besides, the dime thing. Alive that day, for sure, I had to consider my life: first-- buy strawberries.