things i will do in june.

It already feels like full-on summer around here, but the roses remind us of the month it is. Across the street an elderly neighbor has been tending to her immodest beauties. I’ve yet to see her stick her nose directly into the deep folds of the velvety petals, but everyone deserves their private moments of ecstasy and I don’t doubt she has hers under the watchful eye of her St. Anthony statue alone.

On this side of the street, the roses are of a wilder variety—less tended to, more delicate, perhaps suffering slightly more from the towering oak tree above them and the children who pull on the spindly stems and stick their noses directly into their wide-open centers. I snipped just one and plunked into a tiny bottle on my desk. Private moments of ecstasy, indeed.

Mostly unrelated, I’m a few weeks into a new breakfast rut—a term I use affectionately to describe my weeks-long devotion to a single breakfast dish before it inevitably gets supplanted by another breakfast dish, which later gets cast aside for another and on and on we go. Right now, it’s toast—the seedier and browner the bread, the better—grilled in a cast iron skillet with one large smashed garlic glove and a handful of whatever green I have that’s good wilted down in glistening pools of olive oil: dandelion greens, pea shoots, shaved asparagus. I sprinkle it liberally with flaky salt and red pepper flakes. If I’m feeling fancy, I add petals from the illicit nasturtiums we have growing on the roof and marvel at eating my colors. Either way, it’s the savory breakfast of dreams and one I eat after school drops are complete; everyone else’s breakfast dishes cleared. I swear it’s is responsible for bringing my sense of taste and smell back quickly post-Covid and it’s maybe also the secret to eternal youth. I don’t know.

As for my May list: My chamomile is growing in thick bushy mounds of green, but so far no flowers to speak of. I’ve given up on my jammed sewing machine and decided to hunt for a new one. The pansies and violas are just about to go leggy and so we’re adding them to everything edible we can think of and readying our goodbyes. I didn’t plan on getting Covid or bearing witness to the gruesome murders of grocery shoppers and school children, but here we are in America in the year 2022.

Other things I will do in June:

+ Take a walk every day.

+ Listen to more podcasts (see above).

+ Drink more water.

+ Find a favorite sunscreen.

+ Make room for new projects.

+ Revive old projects.

+ Try to do something, for fuck’s sake.

PS. June’s promise of poetry.