quick-write: childhood home

Maybe when you approach it, it won’t look like much. Houses are far and few, but chicken houses abound—if it’s an unlucky day you will smell them. Hills bow up on every side like they’re cradling the land beneath, which is covered in lazily waving grasses and wildflowers. The only trees to speak of are ghostly birches in small groves, huddling together as if keeping a secret of the shade. The sun is larger than you’ve known it before, and you are so, so small. The way the rusty pink sunset spills into those hills from the west makes you want to swim in that light; you watch it until it is black-dark every evening from the roof outside your bedroom window. You are acutely aware that you are not the only creature to inhabit this land—you hear coyotes cooing at night, near enough to make you nervous just as you fall asleep. Birds have made their nests in every nook you can find. There is one nestled in the rock path leading through the brush that chases you away if you get too close to her eggs. Others slice their way through the sky, a vibrant indigo when the evening light hits them right. On a walk one morning, you saw a blur of young bunnies, followed by a sturdy-looking mother, disappear into the earth. Maybe you are solitary, but you are not alone.