the blossoms called me out tonight while weeping by the reservoir and posing over and onto its still water. with a gentle clatter they prune back their wandering, cresting on the cymbaled turbulence from the chill. they step falteringly on the tooth of each wavelet. the petals are sitting wrong in the charcoal. the old lombardy poplar is busy whispering for me to come pay my respects, goading me for my inability to sketch the blossoms from memory. the shapes evade me, as if they were sawn away, carelessly, by someone who thought there might be more important things to remember. i watch another blossom skitter down onto the reservoir, a breathless, quiet sob echoing off the rocky rim of the reservoir’s mouth.

my throat burns. not because fire season was rough; my lungs suffered then—and now, still—but my larynx saved itself. no, this time around, my throat is scorched from sesquiterpenes in the tea, gently offset by the milk and sugar. each cup teethes through the slow banalities and anguishes of the days interrupting my ability to draw every last detail. i can feel the trail of embers all the way into my sinuses. the smell of the tea and the blossoms collapses into one smell, one memory, barely differentiable from the rest. the tea grows colder in my hands as the sun continues reclining into the horizon. i consider that i might be too close to tend to all the details properly.

i decide to cut myself out of the city at night and i find my way to get on the next departure with only minutes to spare. from the window next to my seat i can look up at the top of the hill and see the reservoir. the blossoms are too far to make heads or tails of beyond their candycane masses of rosy pale. i take the last sip of my tea as i feel the doors close and the wheels shudder into motion. dusk settles onto the shoulders of the city as we accelerate into the darkness. the conductor punches my ticket as the last of the daylight lapses into rest. before i know it, we’re a few miles past city limits. my sketchbook opens itself to a blank page, and i sketch pages and pages of blossoms from memory, shading each with care, until the tortillon disintegrates into my hands.