Something.

FIBBER

My birdwatching friends tell me, “You’re always seeing birds that don’t exist.” And I answer that my eye seems to change nearly everything it sees and is also drawn to making something out of nothing, a habit since childhood. I’m so unreliable no one asks me “what’s that?” knowing that a Sandhill crane in a remote field can become a yellow Volkswagen. The girl’s blue dress is easily the green I prefer in moments. Words themselves can adopt confusing colors which can become a burden while reading. You don’t have to become what you already are which is a relief. 

Today in Sierra Vista while carrying six plastic bags of groceries I fell down. Can that be a curb? What else? The ground rushed up and I looked at gravel inches away, a knee and hands leaking blood. 

Time and pain are abstractions you can’t see but you know when they’re with you, like a cold hard wind. It’s time to peel my heart off my sleeve. It sits there red and glistening like a pig’s heart on Grandpa’s farm in 1947 and I have to somehow get it back into my body.

Jim Harrison