Saturday, April 11, 2020

I only step outside once today, in the early evening. The laundry man is coming in the morning. My clothes are bagged up, waiting on the upstairs porch, far enough in to avoid the rain. No other humans are outside. I had heard them earlier. Some children were in the yard before I awoke. Now that it’s dark, everyone is gone. The seeds that had been on a ledge by my stairs have finally disappeared. An orange had fallen there in the autumn. Over the months, I saw it turn from bright orange to moldy white, then fall in on itself. The rind dropped away, then the fruit itself, until all that remained were those seeds. They rested there for a couple of more months. Now they’ve either blown away or been carried off by more mobile creatures. Several of the house’s cats are upstairs when I bring my laundry outside. My landlord maintains a set of cardboard boxes, laid out in a precise line, as a home for them. They come out each morning to feast on the clusters of dry food that he sets out in mounds around the yard. When I come back down, one of the cats is sitting by my open door. She surveys what she sees, but has no interest in coming in. I step over her and close the door slowly. She scampers away as I turn off the outside light.