I woke up and I wasn't yet sure if it was a dream or no I was on the sidewalk of a main street and the house that was facing me was in the Cape Cod style the construction: ship lap and it was pained white as was the gapped picket fence grinning like an English girl I used to know there was the narrowest strip of garden between the wrap around veranda and the fence and in it were growing hollyhocks and sunflowers and sweetpeas in another life it would have been somebody's grandmother's house but now it was a dentist's office without parking in the rear crickets were singing under the porch or maybe it was the hydro wires humming we were told about that in the old days I don't think anybody had ever seen a cricket but a lady I know said the cricket is her totem and the ant and the frog her spirit helpers and a teddy to bear witness and God knows what taboo kept her from singing but her wavy brown hair made a storm on a her brow ...

Give us this Day is the online creative journal of Kurtis Kitagawa, PhD (Edinburgh), MPhil (Oxford), MA (Chicago), BA First Class Honours (Calgary), who, withal, considers himself a student of history. Check daily for freshly composed essays and offbeat creative writing inspired by a life spent in universities, government, and business. Job offers gratefully accepted. Alternative facts welcome, and will not be burned. Nor will their ashes be used as eye shadow!