City, brimming.

Washington D.C. is full to brimming: Tulips. Daffodils. Gnarled Magnolia limbs with waxy white and scarlet petals. Hundreds of pink blossomed trees. Blossoms overhead, still unfurling, still clinging. Fallen blossoms underfoot on wet cement and asphalt, on the sheen of windshields and the black grooves of car tires; the newest hue is cherry blossom pink. Everything, everything, a carpet, an emergence, of lush, new, life. The slender tree that grows from the bricked patio outside my sister and her fiance's apartment is two lives at once: brown branch and magenta bloom--one gives something necessary to the other: a grounding force, a flourish of hopeful birth. In this place, I remember: humidity. My hair follicles swell, my skin becomes dewy, my running clothes are slow to relinquish their dampness. It is not yet the difficult season, when humidity meets heat, so I am able to know this swollen air with fondness; I let it quench the dryness that a Montana winter has bestowed. No more nosebleeds here. No more cracked skin.

Washington D.C. is full to brimming: People. Men in clean suits, their shoes polished mirrors. Women in heels and dresses. They know where they are going: this train track, that bus stop, that corner, this crossing. Everyone knows how to rush: keep moving, don't look up, don't apologize, go your own way. After three days I am better at following my sister's small force through the crowd, but I still fear the grate of the escalator, imagining a tumble and metal teeth on the skin of my forehead, a stinging humiliation worse than struck limbs. I hold on to the railing; I try to look as if I know what I am doing. Amidst this mad push, it is easy for me to let loose my judgment; I want people to stop honking, to stop forcing their way through, to look where they are going, to smile in passing. Sometimes this happens, but more often the goal amidst the chaos seems to simply be the destination, the getting done, the surviving. The greatest loneliness is felt in the full room, the throng and bustle. Yet in the bustle I have found connection: the woman at the corner table in the restaurant has a laugh like my mother's. The man sitting across from me on the D2 bus is reading the novel I loved last July. The girl standing on the street corner wears the dress I admired in the storefront window. Every single racing soul takes heart at the trees in bloom, at their pathway now strewn with petals. In the crush of the hurried life, these small relations--notice them, keep them. Call them shared life. Call them blessed. Know them to be before you for a reason.