‘Squirrel's Nest’

Christine Simpson is a working artist. She taught in the departments of Design Communications and Fine Art at the South East University, Waterford, Ireland, for many years. Christine is represented by So Fine Art, Dublin. Her work has been exhibited around the world and generally addresses subjects connected to our natural world, in particular the topic of climate change. Christine has received numerous awards. Her work has also been featured in many publications. Christine’s work is in many private collections and she regularly undertakes commissions for art pieces and commercial photographic illustrations.

Squirrel's Nest

Where do they go? It could've been mistletoe, what with all the leaves gone from the hardwood trees lining both sides of 11th Street. Captivated by the height of its airy mass, I almost stumbled in the recent rain's regurgitation of autumnal downward release, leaf afoot. No, not the holiday hopeful's wish high up there, though lovely the thought. Too much leafiness and tied together by twigs, this mess someone's comfort of home? The squirrels, the squirrels.

Holidays long troubled me. For years, general malaise would set in and I hadn't the maturity to understand. Around September, I'd come to notice in recent years, that's when not me alone would start grabbin' a jacket or sweater and take on a prickly air not right, unsettled, ill at ease, hungry. Hallowe'en munchies, yes. Turn of season more, always bad on the very young and very old, long been said across this section of New World. True all that, by some ancient standard. The older I grew, I felt something more, of expectation gone, grown greedy and lost in
its meaning, like leaf for house above, confusing me the disorder of nature's rule and border, labels.

As soon as earlier, earlier-posted, every year sooner, the back-to-school sales would sweep clean the shelves, store clerks following far-off Corporate's always-near mandate to trot out sooner, faster, more if not convincingly better Halloween, then more Thanksgiving, coming headlong into of course more Christmas and better New Year's ... and should I even continue to fill in the blanks with all the rest, festivities and honors, days created to conjure up, conspire toward more dollars devoted to meddlesome and endless purchasing, at what cost? Everything
deemed essential, all the must-haves necessary but unfulfilling; it won't settle down 'til Valentine's, Passover, Easter, or ... you see my point? At any rate, barely a partial summer to recuperate, and they keep addin' more, new colours needed for the 4th and on and on. I shall stop.

My mind deep, no longer stumbling in downed leaves yet to be gathered and cleared, the solitude of the unpeopled, otherwise-barren street caressed me, its chafing wind now dry and cracking reminding me of time, season, another place unlimited. I looked back up at the little nest of a house high in the sycamore tree (if with my phone, I'd have double-checked the species of trunk, hard to decipher only by wet mash of partial leaves beneath boots and clinging like a bad memory better washed). I waited and looked, not knowing for what, but delaying my routine turn of corner onto Main and back to life and the day's commerce. I'd commenced too early a wintry walk in this town so far south in the Lower 48. Southerners do not readily venture out in such weather, gaaa-rrrraaaashhhhh-cious!, I could hear them scream in street-length syllables, temps dipping below 60, oh my. And with Fahrenheit so far down ha the stick, the recent 'cold' snap moved, dropped, homeless from their customary corners. I hoped not into their graves, no joke.

Noise of any season. I knew the chatter flitting about my head. It was a squirrel's home, indeed, atop that tree. One lone creature. I didn't have my phone, as I said, or I would've searched on how long the newly birthed stay in such a nest – last spring so far away, surely the newbies, them youngins, gone by now, right? – and also posed of the web, older ones keep same bed from year to year?, squirrels mate for life?, and more. I left the minimammal alone. As if. That child's busy, real winter comin', did the guy or gal even know of me, audience of one and not payin'?

I focused on my new street. I had moved on Christmas Eve, back to the first apartment I'd leased in the town, really a small city by most measures. So many years ago then, the new building constructed and shiny, just opened when I drove around looking for a place to live way back when. neighborhoods evolve, unclear boundaries, ever-shifting colours and sights and sounds of people, their ways. So many changes since those years, mostly good, not much all that bad, I reasoned. I passed by a closed restaurant. Clearly, they'd made enough last night, New Year's, and all the remnants of expensive wining and dining scattered from front door to alley dumpster I could partly see in the morning light, shards of bottles, dozens of corks, gold and silver streamers, two red balloons tied to the street sign, the rest having popped, now shriveled and looking sad in the dim landscape. Don't wanna say goodbye either, I mumbled.

I saw my reflection in the establishment's front bay window, despite it being full of smudges and caked with grime. I glared at myself and laughed somehow. At least sunny, I could see parting borders within boundless sky, clouds behind me, a good day ahead, chilly, not cold, both my Yank neighbor and their new internet-love of the hour, half-day, or partial week corrected me last night. She had introduced me to their friend. It was awkward, but not new. For all three of us. As her barechested, boxered husband held open their door in the dark. He did wave with a half-smile, and in hindsight I contemplated that a missed invite. Gift? Turned down?

For me, it felt good to be back where I'd started, empty my nest-bed but unlimited in ways, my own love of the bounded years of marital minutes gone from my life and freeing perhaps from perimeter of prior century, petty the definitions' long hold. Gone, gone with the old year, gone that unique voice and frontier body and comforting, contorting hand of connection, the lines in two palms. Hers gone, forever from this life, hers and mine. No kids, at least that part made easier, but my mind hurried already, I sped up and worried; I didn't know what holiday it would take to dance across my calendar, what year to shimmy, for me to shake it all off and move on, more than a change of address needed to bury finally that relationship, if but been such by my own recollection of definition. Sure, yeah, it but been and a whole lot more. Yeah sure. Yeah.

Squirrelly, I left the urban quietude in greater wonder and scampered back into my apartment-home needing a cuddly blanket or unstiffed drink for warmth, but asking myself, what else might provide heat of heart for me, sensing more lack and lax in all the upcoming, ceaseless slew of seasons salient, every holiday alone at least for now with both parents, times two four siblings, deceased? I wasn't certain if I'd venture back out the rest of the day, maybe not the week's remainder, but this year would be different. If I gave it a rest to start. I could feel the change afoot, albeit tiny tiptoeing of movement within my heart's environs. Bothers of brittle leaves more fallen outside and in, brothers and sisters clearing the view of nature's magic for good, I considered we all make do and can move on in time, adjusting our borders to suit circumstances, those far beyond our little aged control. I reconsidered spring, my allergies, do squirrels suffer too, I wondered, they always seemed so busy.

R. P. Singletary is a lifelong writer across genres of fiction, poetry, and hybrid forms; a budding playwright; and a native of the rural southeastern United States, with recent fiction, poetry, and drama appearing in Literally Stories, Litro, BULL, Cream Scene Carnival, Cowboy Jamboree, Rathalla Review, The Rumen, Bending Genres, D.U.M.B.O. Press, and elsewhere. Website: https://newplayexchange.org/users/78683/r-p-singletary