We sat in a darkening backyard that seemed uselessly partitioned off from the spread of blank, landlocked openness beyond it and I showed her a video of the ocean and people swimming. Huge curling waves crashing over them until they popped up to the surface again grinning and fighting their way back to shore.

When the sunset was bright and dense with dust particles as it was an hour ago, the light was messier. Objects disappeared in a haze.

She had asked me to take a picture of her to send to her boys. Facing me, the sunset to her back, her silhouette stood like a tumbleweed’s -- flyaway hairs suspended in a halo. She grabbed a persimmon from the table and balanced it on her head as if a target for an arrow.

Looking at the photo later we noticed the persimmon wasn’t visible at all. It didn’t have a silhouette like the rest of her. It had simply burned up in the sun’s remnants. I imagined the rays, in the way they spilled quickly across the ground in their last moments, had rushed to envelop all the colors in its likeness and carry them back underground.

I told her that before the 15th century the color orange existed but had no name. This of course made her cry.

Not because it was beautiful, but because it was disappointing. She was like a child in that way-- guilty for things she didn’t cause. She would grab at things and unintentionally crush them. It never felt like violence, but like mishandling potent energy. In her mind everything crumbled into a mess of toothpicks and brittle paper in her hands, and without strict laws of beauty she was just making a mess. Had the persimmon appeared she would’ve felt better about herself. This was her curse I guess. She was gleefully drunk with everything she ever saw and unable to obtain it.

Inside, a bee was trapped in the living room. She told me she regards things like this with very little patience now that she’s a mother. Sprayed with soapy water It floated, woozy, to the ground and died. It looked pretty -- black and yellow on her pink carpet.

This is good she says

She takes a picture before picking it up and throwing it away.

– Maliea Croy