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12  The Landscape for Growth for Annie and Rosie A cardboard sunflower suspended from a tree, birdseed pasted in sprinkle pattern on that star-shaped yellow, art keeps us moving forward: that slant of light at nine a.m. in October like midnight of the mind, the darkened light ecstatic on its journey across trees and red brick chimneys lined with ivy. Two girls play in the backyard playground as if the green world would remain, marigolds gone brittle, the plastic heads of wicker witches chasing down shadows as Sky watches harmlessly, as Day lies like Tupperware over the wet grassiness of morning. Evergreen, in the absence of sunlight, will rule December, whisper through January until the next months seem delayed, until the only words we think we hear become exit wounds, our ears like savages tamed. What will the next house made of papierm âché mean when rain falls like cold missiles from God—when loss becomes the landscape for growth? The memory of green seems fierce amidst the stark tableau of winter, the children reminiscing about being three and at the nursery in a way that most of us cannot. Sky watches  13 over as if memory prompted an assertion to remember more, gray upon gray as the world forgets itself, always the loss of anything but the next blizzard piling snow over the black wrought-iron legs of park benches, over what we choose to forget. The two girls make patterns in the papier-mâché as if snow already surrounded us, the glitter of Christmas like silver appliqué on the sweater that one would wear to Church, about which the other will just smile as if her expression provided an anecdote for earthy days beneath the cold objectivity of autumn sun. ...

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