Inventory of the Last Warm Day

The kitchen radio counts down weather no one asked for. Outside, a wasp drowses on the sill, drunk on the syrup of a pear left to bruise on the counter.

I am cataloguing what the light touches: the brass hinge, the chipped enamel cup, the spoon laid down mid-thought like a small ferry abandoned at the dock.

In the yard, a sheet on the line holds the shape of the wind the way a held breath holds a sentence before it becomes confession or weather.

My mother used to say the year turns on a hinge you cannot hear. I listen anyway. The pear surrenders. The wasp lifts, then settles. The radio keeps counting down.