[Everyday Magic]

by Jen Ferguson


It’s the way the sky seems darker here. It’s the way that you can’t remember seeing a sky this dark in forever, even if, when you think about it, the sky has always been this dark, this heavy with its internal structure of velvet. It’s the way you doubt your eyes because this darkness here is beyond what you can imagine knowing.

It’s the way the sugar-pop song on the radio can breed inside your blood vessels and make you feel multiple. It’s the way that song, outside the realm of the car’s heavy metal structure, never replicates that feeling in you. It’s the way everything, even music, is a matter of location.

It’s the way, looking at your dog that something squeezes inside you. It’s the way that dog used to escape through the small crack between the door as it tried to meet with the frame anytime you dropped your guard. It’s the way he no longer tries to run away.

It’s the way that in any absence of more than 48 hours, you can pick up the woodsy smell of where the logs of your house used to root. It’s the way you count rings at night to fall asleep. It’s the way that while gypsum plaster is fire resistant its smell is flat.