Bruises of Unknown Origin

It was the first time I heard the dove’s low call— three minor notes stretched thin across a motionless prairie on a shimmering hot afternoon, the kind where even shadows try not to move. I felt like I should be in mourning too— but for what, I didn’t know or had forgotten. Black Cats and Roman candles found no customers that day, just heat, and a solitary girl trying not to feel too much. And later that same afternoon, bruises of unknown origin started blooming on my heart— tender without memory, as if the heat itself had pressed something into me I wasn’t ready to understand.