Life stretches out, empty. But maybe life’s not a forever silent house and a perpetually pristine rug. Maybe it’s a bucket waiting to be filled. Joy bursts with noise. Resounds in silence. Echoes color refracted from light. It’s always there, for it relies on nothing.

Leaves tap the window in a boundless cycle of growth, death, renewal. Hard to despair, if your eyes remember to seek out the green.

Releasing the illusion of control isn’t giving up so much as abandoning the fraught tension of worry that felt ever-present.

Purple blooms in a white enamel pot. The pot is labeled “Flowers.” A declaration, without irony, of what is and what will be. If given proper care.

Storytime. This one tugs on an ear, that one flops over in rapture. Another tries to climb inside the book, as if he could live inside what’s being told.

A stack of books tells me I eat too much meat and my sugar intake is questionable. I weigh it down with calendars and lists and a dish of rosy paper hearts.

Rocks glow near iron birds eternally perched. Shades of crimson because feng shui says that red near the bed invites love. It worked.