today

I'm standing on my patio, one hand on the railing, the other hand holding an empty popsicle stick, watching dropped popsicle ice on the concrete transform into rapidly spreading pools of water. The sun is warm, the water and sky are both blue in the distance. Behind me on the table is a yellow collander, bursting with green and red, picked from the garden below. My hands smell like arugula.

This moment, this little universe of watching ice melt on concrete, somehow encompasses everything and nothing all at once.

The ice is fast disappearing and the thought that catches in my head is soon I won't be here anymore.

Not here as in the patio, not here as in the home where I did all my growing up, but here as in myself. Myself today, myself exactly where I am. One foot in childhood and the other in adulthood. About to take the other step.

Fear and joy are there, at the edges of my consciousness. But I can't feel either in this moment of today. I am just here, just waiting, just being. Watching the melting ice.