From the Second Story Porch

This morning I will have the last breakfast in my twenty-three acre country home.

This is where I learned to drive manual, collected too many eggs from my chickens, made elderberry tincture, and went fishing with my cat. I rode in a front end loader in four feet of snow around the cliff edge of my driveway, bred mice, and hiked with a friend made too late. I drank thousands of cups of coffee made in the sunroom, shot a raccoon with my bow, hosted two Hunger Games parties, and wrote my first novel.

I’m lovesick for this place, but it’s time for a raw infatuation.

My new apartment, lacking the sounds of swollen streams in the morning and baby coyotes practicing their howls at night, is fresh and shiny and safe.

Tonight I will have the first dinner there.