The Lie of the Land
an excerpt

I wasn’t expecting to miss so much about the life I’d left behind. There were so many beautiful images burned into my mind, images I’d gathered on my daily bike rides: The couple that stood on the beach with their backs to me, two lone dark spots in a vast, fiery, fluorescent pink sunset. The grebes arcing and swimming just under the surface of the bay like tiny dolphins. The sailboats moored peacefully in the cove, casting ribbons of bright reflections in the water as they bobbed about. The great white heron that patiently stalked, stabbed, and swallowed a fish as long as his beak, as I patiently watched. The five Chinese girls who cooed and giggled in their musical language, took pictures of each other with the new camera one had just bought, then all craned to look at the tiny images on the back of the camera. The City, defined by black towers and golden glints of morning sunlight, against a pale blue sky. The stretch of inner bay, pungent, exposed at low tide, and fecund with tiny sandpipers. The cormorants who lined up on the breakwater, one by one stretching and airing their black wings. The little house that had been painted the perfect shade to match the lavender growing in large mounds in the front yard.