Porch

I am camping out on the porch.

It's a small, glassed-in room with windows on three sides.  It has a daybed, a chair, a single bookshelf, and, inexplicably, a small rocking horse.  Most crucially, I can't hear the baby from there.

We're taking shifts at night, so when I'm not on infant duty, I head to the porch.  The daybed is not particularly comfortable, but it a flat surface, and when I lie down on it I can stare out the window into a wash of green. Most often, what I do on the porch I sleep.  But sometimes, for just those few beats before exhaustion snatches me up like a hawk, I stare out at the branches of the trees.  It's the fat part of the July and they're in full regalia, draped with leaves, stuffed with birds, limned by scraps of a blue so far gone to black I almost miss its color.  When the last of the light drains away, they vanish, but I seldom make it that far.