Changes

And today I realized that less and less I am counting the hours ahead by six—what time is it back home? Are they eating supper? In bed yet? Awake for tomorrow already? What are they doing in their world?

And more and more the floors are feeling familiar, gritty with sand that reappears as soon as I sweep it away. And my ears stopped popping from the steady climb up the side of the volcanic crater where my house sits. Or maybe they didn't stop popping. Maybe I just stopped noticing it.

Here the clouds reach down and touch the mountains, aqua blue waves kiss the shore, gentle breezes tug my hair up and slowly away, flowers fall from trees like snow.

But I remember sweeping fields that line I-95, barns collapsing in the middle, smells of summer thick in my nostrils, the rumble of a distant storm, a flash in the sky.