Milkweed.
I turn a corner and am confronted by a layer of white upon the grass, gleaming in the dying light like a soft dusting of snow - milkweed. A bell chimes inside my ribcage. I find the pods and begin to open them, to set them free to the wind. They gather and dance in my cupped hands like living things; they kiss my face and cheeks with their softness before they fly away. Some of the pods are still green, the seeds inside them still curled like scales around their wet silks, not yet ready to float away in the wind. I want to stuff them in my pockets by the hundreds, take their softness with me and spread them somewhere new. I wonder what you could do with them, these tiny puffs of life. Could I fill a comforter with them, spin them into yarn, knit them into a blanket? If I did, would I find that next spring, when the buds began to sprout, I had a quilt of flowers?
Later, at home, I keep finding them, the soft reminders of autumn, tangled in my scarf. Up the cuffs of my jacket. In my pockets.
