May. Milk moon. Driving home from the beach last weekend, fresh off visiting my mom, I stop at a roadside shack and buy small, sweet strawberries. I wash them with the fancy bubble water I was drinking until they look as bright as gems in the sunshine. I eat them as I drive north on 64 through Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Charlottesville, stopping in Crozet to buy a little can of coldbrew coffee. It thinks about storming, starts a little bit, and then thinks better of it. Sunshine on wet pavement. I haven't moved around the state in a long time, or driven further than Elkhorn or to my parents. Even then rarely. It all makes me cry and cry, like the world is too green and raw and I'm unused to it after so long.
In July, I'll go back to the area for my tattoo, and then again, and then again. (It's a big tattoo. Each session is six hours and there are to be three sessions.) I'm a little nervous. But how much can moths hurt me?
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My friend, sitting out in the after-sunset dim of the yard, says her baby is moving and puts my hand on the spot. She says I need to push hard so down, really bounce my bunched fingers against her stomach, because this activity will attract the fetus. She promises I can't hurt it. Can you imagine? Me: so harmless. I obey fruitlessly for what feels like a long time and it's awkward. She and I aren't especially close, and her rounded stomach feels oddly hard, not at all soft like mine.
But then I feel it. It reminds me of fly-fishing, the way a fish hits the line with one hard strike, bouncing the rod back against my palm. I imagine her baby as a trout, silver as moonlight, surfacing up from black water and casting ripples across my fingertips.
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My head is so full of crows. I spent all day with them, looking at them, or gardening. This sounds lonely, but they talk a lot.
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