In the garden my mother sits smiling at me. The bricks on the house that frame her need to be power washed, and the weeds in the bed need to be pulled.

Wandering into the dunes I removed my boots. People snaked from the parking lot across the creak like ants. This was not a religious pilgrimage, but in retrospect it was an act to get closer to god. People had paid 20 dollars to a guy in a cowboy hat to rent a sled or a snowboard with the edges duct-taped. The sea had stopped here one day a millennia or three ago and left a ghost.

The baby crawled over to her mother and looked up into her smiling face. A strange thought came as her mom made strange grunts and and gurgles shaking her head back and forth like a dog as she smiled down.

I decided to remove all my cloths when I mowed the lawn this time. The backyard was a joy. Walking up and down air rushed between my thighs, and before long my calves were coated in clippings. The front yard, however, turned darker.

When I started the wood stove for the first time this fall the flue was stuck shut, and all the smoke poured into the house. The fire was too far gone to stop and too small to build up to flame. I called the stove a bitch and wrenched open windows letting in the chilled air. Then I lit a rolled up newspaper on fire and held it to the top of the stove. The flue opened and the smoke was pulled up, but for a week after the whole house was stained with my anger and inadequacy.