On the day you fell the life you lived the future you wanted came down from the clouds to taste the cold Earth. The strong column of bone that carried your spirit was crushed not by the fishing boats you once sailed in the West not by the numerous hours you spent hunched over printing photos in the dark for acclaimed men of New York City but by mere coincidence a misplaced foot perhaps in a life that couldn’t keep up with you. Still that didn’t stop you from peeking over the fence and startling me with your big glasses and bigger hello one early morning. You bent over and gathered some sprigs of lavender from your lovely garden. A housewarming gift you said for the new kid on the block. Then there were the eggs I wanted but couldn’t eat, freshly laid by your loved hens. Their happiness was a familiar sound in the quiet dawn that housed our street. I heard yours too in the way you talked to them as if they were sacred, royalty. “They only eat organic.” Even the wildflowers listened. You always asked them to come home with you (“if they wanted to” of course) and they responded always with glee. They knew what care and joy felt like. Rising from my own fall after all these years now I know it too.