Soil

She loved morning sunlight the best, when it arced overhead in a slow and steady bird-like flight across the yard.

Pinking her nose, her thighs as she waded in the soil of her garden, alongside the barn and across to the little house.  Where grass never did quite well but never stopped them from trying...mostly though it was in the ground where she planted the Dahlias, and hoped for the Rainbow version.

Up the street in the Southern States feedstore she had plunged her hand into the seed bins, like bits of unmade candy in hopes of finding stark and contrasting colors.  She tied the seeds into tiny plastic bags with white foil ties and put them in the truck.  She loved the season of planting...re-starting...new and unmet colors.  Digging in the warming soil she barely had to use a trowel, but she had her hair pulled as tiny rivulets of sweat slid on her forehead, past her cheek.  She untied each of the bags and placed them delicately into the holes, patting them with covering and moving to the next batch.

A water pail was nearby, the water filled to the rim and it shimmied in the slight breeze.

She stood up to take a break and walked into the house, just as the air-conditioning clicked on with an audible snap and the screen door was shut.  It was well lit inside, and the refrigerator was ticking away and she snapped it open and pulled out a Corona.  She tugged the cap off with the iron opener on the counter and slugged down about half of it.  She looked at her hands, the dirt staining the sides of the beer bottle and her fingernails.  She looked at the yellow beer and hoped that perhaps some of the colors of the flowers would be that golden.

She went back outside, the screen door putting a punctuation on her departing.

The sun was full noon, barely a shadow beside her.  The beer was still on her lips, the droplets of sweat were still on her forehead.  The ground in front of her was mottled grass, a bit of white-washed brown in the old soil and fresh circles of newly ground soil the color of coffee.  It was a preview.

She imagined the future explosions of color, the contrast to the earth.

It was what she saw every morning over her dark eyes in the mirror, putting bits of pink on her lips, slight blues or silvers on her eyelids...

She was a sweet garden of colors and had no seasons but rather could bloom every day.  In winters and falls...she needed no rain nor water pail.

But even more so, she was the dark rich soil...where he could be buried, where he could be covered and with her perfect, certain care he would emerge.

Maybe not beautiful, but certainly better than he imagined.