Glimpses

My hands clasp and embrace with opposing forces. working it's way underneath the small ring, my index finger smoothly lifts, popping the seal. Carefully, carefully I prize the lid so as not to stain my hands with the pungent smell. Six fat fishes.

Over my shoulder, his face framed in his upraised hands, themselves framed in the windshield. If not for his look of disgust, I would not be so outraged. My wool clad hand obscures him, middle finger raised.

Like sites in a gunners turret, my foam clad fists target on my good friends head. Our frenetic pace is seized by the sudden stillness of the standoff. In my peripheral, the uninitiated woman titters uncomfortably. We lunge simultaneously.

It's sort of red, with maybe swaths of a dark yellow/brown, but probably not. It's certainly not black, like we often say it is. Dozens of white, or perhaps they're blue, squares hover there, all layered upon each other, corners poking out, brighter in the middle. The monitor screen blinds me when, at last, I crack my eyelids.

My whole body moves the thin bead along the line where the wall intersects the plane of the door casing. The paint, a pleasant dark sage, glides off the bristles with a slight waver, forgivable at anything beyond this magnified concentration. My tongue emerges from the corner of my mouth.

A Flicker, Colaptes auratus, mulishly pecks at the broken crest of a telephone pole. It looks bored though.

She looks annoyed that I am standing there, shyly asking for a glass. When she returns, I correct this by grinning at her. Her crow's feet, laugh lines, and other wrinkles deepen in a genuine smile. The pint is frosty from their fridge.