Puzzle Pieces

“Japanese maples, is that some kinda paradox,” she groaned to me, dumping her full dustpan out the kitchen window. “What do the Japanese want with maples when we’ve got them here like dirt and they’ve got, what, cherry blossoms like puzzles pieces spilled all over the floor.” Between hard stares and emphysemic coughs that shook her wiry hair, she said such things all the time. That was Gloria: she took the sun as a lozenge, a waft of smoke as the air, and her memories as a knotted string of rosary beads. —from The Visitor (a work-in-progress)

(Words and image © Chris Bronsk 2015.)