Sunday Afternoon

I am looking out my bay window and watching wind run fingers through the tall prairie grass, the grass bleached blond by our long winter. Occasionally, a bluebird or raven shocks across the Elkhorn Mountain backdrop. Out back, the ice on the lake is receding and will likely vanish within a day or two. My wife of twenty-five years sleeps soundlessly in her reclining chair nearby.

I have never liked that chair. Something about the spare design of it. The skinny arms. Thinking about the chair, I turn back to look at it, at my wife sleeping there. She has never outgrown her pretty. Not her. She is stretched out under a burgundy blanket, save her face and a single hand lying atop the blanket. Two deep red tourmaline rings catch light on her fingers. My sister told her she needs to wear red. Red is for health. She started wearing the rings just two days ago.

That's the thing. Health. On the very first day of spring, the doctors told us a bad, bad thing. Uyen has incurable cancer. Weeks? Months? Uyen's time thinning like the spring ice. Unless the rings can save her. Maybe if I learn to like that goddamn chair. Or maybe if we don't stop talking once she wakes again.

I sit and wait for her to wake.

--Mitchell Hegman