July 8 - Consistently Wrong

I got off to a late start writing today because we went away for a night.  Today's prompt made me immediately think of the orchard this woman would have been tending and how hard it would have been to take on the tasks her husband had once done.  Here is my draft for today:

On the Days I Was Consistently Wrong


The first few weeks after my husband's death the Allen brothers would come by every other day.

Their tall willowy bodies tethered me to the earth and to the task of watering and plowing the rows.

On the days they weren't there I tried to walk in their shadows, tried to match footstep for footstep, task for task. But I was always consistently wrong.

The coffee would burn. Joe would howl. The dust would take to the air in clouds.

And each tree looked impossible to trim back. I couldn't see the lines.

Pretend you are looking at the stars, I’d hear him whisper. Remember how you could never see the forms when we first started off?

And I’d repeat to myself under my breath: Virgo, Pleiades, Cassiopeia. Remember how the powdery stars became the shapes he described, as I walked each leafy row.

Until by body learned the motions of the ranch. Until the shapes emerged from the trees.