Spring

Spring

He took his first breath on a late spring afternoon, somewhere between the rains and the scorching sun surrounded by green stalks of corn reaching toward heaven and tangled raspberry bushes wandering along a rusty chain linked fence.
The air hung thick with humidity from an approaching storm, making each breath damp and heavy like long forgotten photographs thoughtfully placed atop a kitchen table like tarot cards.
One is of a child posing uncomfortably in those 1970s clothes filled with too much orange and plaid.  Another is of two brothers hugging much to the delight of their mother, but to the dismay of their individual fathers. And then, there is that photograph of a smiling little boy with a beer can in one hand and a pack of cigarettes in the other.
Those memories linger for a moment, but disappear almost unnoticed as small pieces fly out of car windows in the Arizona desert, or are dropped on the floor of a bus station bathroom in Sinaloa on trips across continents.
Some drown in the heaving Pacific after being swept away on the winds of a typhoon. Others are simply pushed to the side by the excitement of youth and the ambitions of adulthood.
As if the transition from sweet bloom of spring to the heavy heat of summer would be eternal.