Saturday Forecast

Stuffing my bare feet into the front of your jacket you adjust suitably and pull the two sides together and wrap the entire bundle in your arms. We sit opposite each other on the back porch. The owl lanterns look solemn in the morning light, their eyes made of bright, hard plastic. They must have scared away the pigeons who do not come around anymore. I stare disapprovingly at the bowl of wet tobacco butts ruining my aunt's ceramic bowl. You light a cigarette and nurse it slowly, pausing before each draw to catch my eye, or watch a branch twist in the autumn climate.

I am trying hard to memorize how your face looks in each kind of light. This morning you are content and relaxed, pulled-in just a little as your pupils adjust. Within a day you will be gone. The smoke from your lungs will swirl out to the edges of my tiny apartment, opening up the centre, giving me the sensation that I am disposed and within the eye of a storm. I won't open the windows, but I will remain in the living room looking at my bare feet, and puzzling over your kind of weather. * * *