It's Still Life

He made this bench from an oak limb felled by lightning. Each plank cut and oiled by hand. It learned to read the curve of my spine. It knows the weight of thought.

It was a July afternoon, heat spilling in from the continent, he found me in a gift of shade, he held two glasses of ice and lemonade. “There you are,” he said, “looks like you’re melting.”

He was wrong. I was cool as river stone. Cool as a deep root. Cool as the quiet love that builds a bench just to hold you — in the heat, forever.

MicroDosing Fiction 100µg (words) about “garden in shade” — Image cc0, from Wikiart.org poems/prose ©Misky 2006-2026.