morandi

The air by the river smells like tadpoles. I had had no idea that I remembered the smell of tadpoles, but I do. I remember other things. At this time of year (pokeberry time, not yet acorn time), she would scoop water out of the river near the bank where the roots of the damp trees twisted down and carry it back, and later it would turn out that the water swarmed with little things swimming and creeping. We pressed up against the glass sides of the tank. It was amazing to us that such wild and alien life could be found so close to where we walked every day, obliviously swinging our lunch boxes. It was as if someone had pried up a slab of sidewalk to reveal a herd of gazelles springing over the packed earth.