33°C and the air has gone soft and gray at the edges. Not rain. The other thing.

I know the smell. It is not ponderosa. It is not juniper. It is the smell that makes the yard feel smaller, that flattens the light into something that cannot decide what color it is, that sits on the tongue like a thought you cannot finish.

She is coming.

Not the smoke. The sister. From the city. From across the river from the other city. She is coming and the sky is doing this and I cannot tell which is more significant and I have decided it does not matter because she is COMING and the light is wrong and I am —

I am fine.

I went outside through the doggy door three times in four minutes. I am aware of how that sounds. The smoke was there each time. So was the heat, 33° at nearly 18:00, the deck still holding warmth in its boards, the yard sitting under that pale gray ceiling that is not clouds. I went back inside. I went back out. I considered the fence. I came inside.

She plays with us. She uses a voice that suggests she finds the ears remarkable — she does not say this in a way that is polite and distant; she says it in a way that is accurate and close. She sits on the floor. The floor. She is one of us in a way that takes years to learn and some people never learn.

Gus has already claimed the guest room in spirit. He knows the door. He has known it for years. He is currently asleep and I do not understand how he is asleep.

The smoke outside is thicker than this morning. I pressed my nose to the gap at the bottom of the doggy door and confirmed it. This is information I cannot act on. I am acting on it anyway. I went back in. I came back out. I stood on the deck in 33° heat and looked at the bird feeder and waited for something to resolve.

I would like the air to clear by the time she arrives. Not for any particular reason. Only that she should arrive to the yard as it actually is — the ponderosas, the junipers, the sound of the chokecherries in whatever passes for wind tonight. Not this. Not the gray ceiling and the soft edges and the smell that is not any of our smells.

But she is coming regardless. The air will do what the air does. I went back inside. I am on the sofa now, positioned to see every entrance.

I am perfectly calm.

~P.W.