the summer was a wet one. lilies were choking in the east fields, and cows' nipples were rubbed raw with wringing, only for gallons of milk to be poured in the river as motherless children starved. in the morning I woke on a strange mattress, under a familiar roof. the window was open. my neighbor on her balcony was hanging her scarf to dry. a scarf. something you wear as an accessory. or for protection - for yourself and for faces you have never seen- or just to feel something soft against the softest part of you, that cave at the vase of your throat. my neighbor wrings her wet, pink scarf into a little green thing, a little plant-thing, she has in a bowl. I am thinking about this gentle act, this act of watering plants with a wetness that could have just as easily been lost to the air. tomorrow I will wake again under the same roof. and yet today already I am thinking about the possibility of witnessing this softness again, tomorrow.