seasonal change

Upped the weights today. We are all officially gym rats, what with the trash talking by the squat barbells. My arms are sore and it's pleasant and I got all the recycling out so there is that little bit of accomplishment. If only I didn't have the insomnia that makes you uncover pictures of your high school crushes and listen to "Crash" by the Cure over and over like you haven't in ten years. Rather, I should take out Vlad or Ernest or even Marjani, tuck into bed. But the house is so empty with Mary gone. It sings, this emptiness. So that I have to wheedle the ladies into dinner on the pretext of fragility in order to not be alone in it. Summer is a funny time here, full of new discoveries. In the kitchen some sort of rose is falling open fragrantly, reminding me of a moment of attention. There is room for strangers now, for library books and six days a week of workouts and drives down to the lake where billboards of eagles glow eerily in the mist. I saw a heron by the river yesterday. They are, I was told, "our largest bird."