It was fair of you to worry I would forget your birthday. The crabgrass has overgrown my

tomatoes. Digging in my purse and not finding a pen and paper for new lines is like hopping out

of the car at the grocery and realizing my purse is at home. I hear the garden soil calling through

the kitchen wall, and I am off-balance. My muscles are edgy and weakened from three days

without making a poem. The neighbor’s cucumbers have penetrated the fence between us. My

daughter spins, drops herself to the carpet, says it is hot lava because she is off-balance. I

remembered I had planted seeds for the Japanese forget-me-nots only when they bloomed, blue,

alongside the coreopsis. Something’s bound to burn when next I fall.