recent observations, week 2.

linden, cherries, and my saggy neck.

Coaxing a bee out an open window is easier than swatting it.

This is service journalism.

This morning I was a person who wanted to turn a sidewalk-found three-tiered-kitchen hanger into a hanging garden. This afternoon, I am not.

When the school bus stops idling you can smell the linden trees.

My child leans in close and runs a sticky hand from my ear to shoulder blade and back again. They take my jaw in two hands, and say: The skin on your neck is so bu-ful.

Can they hear what I don’t say out loud?

Summer city leaves a film on you.

The purple-leaf plum tree across the street is dropping fruit. I wonder about bringing over my stepladder.

A block over there are sour cherries as high as the roof. I do not own a crane.

Neither do the starlings or sparrows.

A dozen blocks away, a woman pushing a stroller in front of me reaches up and plucks two cherries from a tree. An old woman raps on the window. She wags a scolding finger. Does she stand guard all day?

Three blocks over and seven up, an old man on a step stool fills a smiley-faced plastic shopping bag with purple-leaf plums. I want to ask him what he plans to make, but I never stop pedaling my bike.

Morning glory seeds look nothing like moonflower seeds. I’m soaking them both.

Brooklyn backyards are filled with empty laundry ladders. They are missing their lines; their tangles of white sheets and embroidered tablecloths.

I want to hear the squeak of pulleys on weekend mornings.

I want to fall asleep to the sound of someone else’s Sinatra. Coltrane. Nina Simone.

What if we let each other air our dirty laundry? What if we found comfort there?

Usually wind bothers me, but not this kind.