Flash Fiction
It’s summertime, but seasons are arbitrary anyways. The floor of the yard is cool and welcoming, the trees indifferent and rustling, sunlight dappling the leaves in a somber, mellow touch. You never could name those trees. They might as well be oak, or acacia, damned if you knew the difference.
The shadows lengthen in the yard and you sit there, alone, your mind abuzz. You are just a child, not even an adolescent yet, and your brain is still struggling with ameliorating the conflicting surges of evolutionary selfishness and human empathy.
The scent in the air is sweet. It smells of langour, of lazy, sleepy evenings when days and the structure behind days all fall apart; and in fact it is one of those fuzzy evenings, those that come hand-in-hand with a pleasant version of exhaustion, those that put the bustling world out of focus, those evenings that feel tinted with the tiredness of recovering from a brief spell of viral infection. And indeed, it is a lovely evening, one that won’t reprimand you for sleeping in or, even better, consciously but unresistingly slipping into a soft, deep, evening nap. It is that evening when one set of task or a certain event is postponed and you suddenly find yourself with ample free time to catch up with neglected duties that you could very well do but are simultaneously physically unable to accomplish, as if the universe itself is bent to reserve this respite for unadulterated rest and rejuvenation.
A bird chirps and the melody too is lazy, languorous, and lethargic; glazed by the low, humming vibration of the evening. You cannot name the bird, for you were never quite that good at that either, but it does not matter.
You sit on the cool cemented floor of the yard, lean your novel against your chest, knowing full well that the vibe of the day is designed to deny you more than a few, half-registered paragraphs, and slip into a deep, void-like sleep.