Yesterday I got back to Fuquay-Varina, where my little plot o'land be.
Mom said she counted about 20 bolls waiting for me; this may've been an exaggeration, it may not've.
They were full and fluffy, soft and round.
I brought them home to add to my paper bag labeled 'SAVE COTTON' that my mother and sister started to collect what bolls developed when I was traveling a few weeks ago (this bag is quite stuffed, rests in a larger paper bag of cotton that's been deseeded.)
The point is this:
I stretched out the bolls to lay out in the air before tucking away.
As usual, I pressed their gathering gently around my face, and inhaled;
they convinced my brain that it was actually the air hovering above snow, in between trees on a mountainside-winter night that at that moment entered my sinuses.
and
Sometimes the 'silk'iness of the fiber, I watched grow from dirt and now stretches between my fingers, makes me gasp as though I would cry.
just sayin.
