In Progress...
----------
__________________
Back when the neighbors wore good clean shirts--cotton--with pockets stitched loudly from a machine you could hear sometimes when they were standing close, back when the yard was work you did because it was your land right, it was your flag, to mow, to rake, to sweep, so many active verbs used on that plot with a mailbox a cool 20 seconds away with its firm handshake of an arm sticking up for the mailman as hello, like a message in a bottle he will pick up and chaperone to its next place. Back to there, where it will be opened like a fortune cookie from Mr. Chin's-where the shrimp low mein is not too oily- and whoever opens that letter will have their fortune changed, as sure as there is Mr. Chin to begin with, with his smile and bow that makes you wish you were that nice and gracious every day, which you vow to remember next time you are with temper, next time it tracks you down in its relentless way, that you'll bow to it but not lose anything in the exchange, as sure as that wish, the day, that letter from the mailbox from the house with the yard from the person in their shirt with the cotton and the pocket with stitches --it all zooms in slow motion until the lens fogs and all you can hear is your breath against a small pine cone you held in the park when you were six, and smelled while it scratched your nose. Oh that smell that smell reminds you now of christmas with snow and presents and cinnamon flurried on to baked cookies which by now remind you of trees, but way back
then is when the picture had no frame. The frame comes after time. Sometimes it's mahogany, sometimes it's no-nonsense oak, sometimes it comes from the box under dirt, but better to put your hand to it before then. Build it while the neighbors look on, even, because they should be minding their own business and heck you did put up curtains. But build the frame around it all, as you wish it to be.

He put on his best white shirt- cotton- buttoned it on the porch he had built. Solid ground, he thought, as he walked towards the silo.