Seed

Sitting at my writing desk late last night, sweating in the trapped solar heat radiating from my house, gazing lethargically out the window, I saw what appeared to be an enormous spider, illuminated by the sodium arc streetlight above the asphalt intersection, gliding down an invisible line at an angle to the street.

I rushed outside, because there are no spiders native to this land as enormous as what I thought I saw, and because it was considerably cooler outside and any excuse to go outside is a good one. The air is stagnant, no breeze to cool the house.

I walked out into the intersection in aqua colored swim trunks and a white t-shirt, just as the seed had fallen to my knee height. Not a spider, but a tiny seed with delicate white feather-like strands extending outward in all directions in the shape of a ball. I dropped my hand below it palm up, wanting the seed to drift down into my hand.

Instead, the subtle air currents initiated by the movement of my hand pushed and pulled the ephemeral seed away from me, toward the center of the intersection. I stood there, in the street, illuminated by sodium arc, in the city, watching the seed travel further into the intersection and then up, caught in the radiant heat emanating upward from the asphalt, the white seed illuminated orange rising above my head, gaining speed, to the height of the lowest tree branches, within feet of the street light and then above it, into the darkness out of sight.