Invisible Wires

We are tethered to one another with invisible wires. I type the words into a flat screen, “I am relieved” in New Mexico in my red chair and my sister in California receives them at her kitchen table overlooking redwood trees heavy with their separation someday from solid earth. We each hold a morning cup and relish the sip.

I am sensing the past in scent and sensation more than I have before. And wonder if I passed through a tunnel or under a magical lamp post I have circled for 67 years. Now I own an old woman’s nose. First piqued sense is smell. A headiness that is potent but brief. I go back to it throughout the day like a diary left open on the bedside table.

Sun hits puddled water. Water spills from table to concrete. Runoff trickles toward the base of tree. I am a child in a wading pool again. In a bucket are prickly weeds that my husband pulled. An age-old slime replicates on the surface, resembles algae along the perimeter of an inland river. My father, fly fisherman, exhibits release.

When I walk out to the mailbox this afternoon after a long rain, through the inhalation I am transported to the very county where my sister sits in receipt. Different trees, same distance between straight back chairs and bare seeker’s arms wrapping around the roughest spirit captured in bark, the sight straight up and through.