This stone-heavy ball of hope. This gravel-slick hill before me.

It’s easier to forgive the dead for what they’ve done than to forgive the living for what they’re doing.

Cinched by cumulus clouds, the Pine Valley Mountains are sugar-white thanks to yesterday’s snow. Below, sand-encrusted cars zip behind the cattle ranch’s picket fence. Three rock doves draw my eye from cottonwood to rooftop, then everything is still until the air shifts, until another car passes, until another bird flies. I could waste my life here, right here.