Chilanga Sprinkles

We sat on the porch looking out on the fenceless yard. The old house, with its peeling lead paint and a chimney that had once cleared smoke from the living room coal stove, sat at our backs and was filled with artifacts of her past and present. Family heirlooms and thrift-store finds that had been too good to pass up.  A drooping vine-covered powerline hung just above the trees, beyond where she’d planted tomatillo and tomato plants that now bowed to the earth heavy with fruit. I moved through her world with the comfort of belonging. From her lips spilled intense sorrow incongruent with her small pink mouth. Grief colored her face in hues of red, accentuating the soft fuzz on her cheeks, her now white wiry hair,  and the shine of her blue eyes. Two friends in yellow chairs talking as if the distance of years did not exist.