Monograph on May, Photograph of Millie

Millie Out Walking
by Jim

May has been so full and the week days so brutal. I'm staying in a hotel in a strange place, six days a week, pouring over legal documents, Excel spreadsheets and paperwork. Paperwork, paperwork, paperwork. I do that until it's time to do reports. Or attend meetings. Why are there so many meetings? Oil and gas brokers love meetings. I yawn and tap my pen on my paperwork and mentally bow out, leaving the suits behind as I dream of knitting and pies and sagging clotheslines and picket fences. I don't enjoy this business but am unspeakably grateful for the job. Means to an end, Brin. It's a means to an end.

But the weekends? Saturdays are every bit as sweet as Mondays are brutal. Saturday I started reading The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie and was too delighted for words.

I picked wild blackberries and searched dusty cookbooks for jam recipes, a blackberry tart in mind.

I lay on my back and stared at stars, outlining their heavenly shapes with my finger.

I followed Millie through wildflowers and clover meadows, walking everywhere and nowhere.

And I slept. I put a lace-trimmed case on my pillow and slept the sleep of a child: dreamless, heavy, and deep.

Here's to a mundane month, missing you, and another weekend coming 'round the bend.  -Brin