Wall

I step out my back door into the yard. It’s different today. Colleen, my cranky, wrinkled, busybody of a landlady and neighbor, is ordering around a laborer, as she is wont to do.

Colleen owns everything in her view and is the unquestioned master of her realm. She giveth and she taketh away. She benevolently grants small gifts and decorations for you to use while you abide in her presence, but they can be taken back, changed, whenever the mood strikes her or if your use of them somehow displeases her. The table I moved outdoors to put plants on disappeared one day without a word. Perhaps I did not care for it properly. The broom, a gift as well as a “sweep your porch” reminder, similarly vanished when she discovered I already had my own.

The sun beats into my eyes, brighter than before. My yard is naked and exposed and unfriendly.

Colleen and her hired man are rearranging the entire landscape. An unfinished wall is replacing a simple fence. Plants and earth are gone, replaced with stone. The tree I worried would fall on me with every rainstorm is gone. The yard, green and private and friendly before, a sanctuary, is a cell now. Rough slate and concrete on all sides, holding me in, trapping me with the heat of the day.