Everything the wind touched

It blew all night and all the next day. Not a storm — nothing dramatic enough to have a name — just a steady, unrelenting push out of the west that made the house tick and creak like it was thinking something over.

I went out into it in the afternoon because staying in was worse.

There is a particular kind of quiet that only happens inside a lot of noise. You can't hear yourself think, so you stop trying, and what's left is mostly just being a person standing in a field with your hair going sideways.

I came back in with cold hands and nothing solved, which was fine.

Everything out there was moving and none of it was going anywhere. The whole field leaning one way, then a little less, then one way again. It went on doing that long after I stopped watching.

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