Dear Penelope, by M

The girl has a new keyboard. It doesn't quite sing but she likes it just fine.

She's sitting in dirty clothes for the 2nd load of laundry, chewing on sunflower seeds and petting her dog Bodo. The cup of cold tea to her left has an iceberg bobbing in it and outside its cool like Spring might be if the girl didn't live in LA, and there's a bright pink watermelon rind from yesterdays BBQ sitting on the sill. Her Grandpa called her a b-r-a-t midway through past the hotdogs and during the shortbread cookies. She didn't think it entirely untrue but it made her sad to think that was all he would ever know of her. And Carmel, who's 94, didn't like that he called the girl that, and had told the girl before, that it is H-E-C-K getting older, except to her ex-nun sister who's 90 she said, H-E-L-L.

The girl wanted to tell you that today she feels like a round drop of dew in the base of a flower bud, a dark, quiet cool place until the sun comes out. She shimmers in private.

Nothing so important seems to be going on, not letters to herself or volcano stories, or outings to far off places, 'xcept she's praying a lot for some people over here and that seems like the work she likes most right now. When they're praying a breeze strikes up and it occurs to her that its the Holy Spirit coming right down and refreshing them. A visiting wind that says what they're doing is pleasing him who created the dark green grass she finds herself on or the coral tree twisting up and bursting forth red flames for flowers.

The girl sometimes grows weary, and sleeps like she's sleeping off ages. And the girl has a silly job right now, apart from the praying one, that she's not so positive about but her dissatisfaction only smolders. Never flares. And she wonders if God has a hand it, because she's trying to fan the flames and it never takes. Friends come down too and temper with encouragement, so the girl sits and waits and wonders whats next, kicking up dust, picking flowers.

Her knee speaks to her sometimes of giving up and of getting old, but she keeps on jogging and walking and swimming and yoga'ing, and tries to go with care but keeps on going anyway. That's the thing she thinks. No matter how slow the results. The other day she saw a house surrounded with plants in buckets and pots, clustered, struggling as if they were the remnant of an apocalypse and she longed to see them set free in the ground, but seemed like the ground wasn't to be trusted, maybe wasn't ready or the owner not willing to let them go free.

And as the sun is up and the girl has swam, and laid out on the beach and eaten hotdogs and is off to another such sort of thing tonight, she has to go. There's more to be said, about missing Penelope and coming back around as the rains come and the waters increase. Books to be read and stories to be written. Men to long for and debts to be paid. Schools of discipline, peace and rest. And all of that in moments and a blink. She only hopes for her, the girl has conveyed just enough.