She sat on the front porch and watched the summer sun carry through. Felt the heat of an afternoon. Too much like a trajectory.

The neighbors were working to clear pine boughs from a dead lawn. Working to remove the kill of shade. Revising their lives.

Their boy was superhero clothing and a cap gun like a branding iron. Shooting the pale moon out of a blue expanse.

He aimed and triggered. Swung his hips to the target baseball style. Pursed his look in a face pasted in conviction and convicts. He pointed at her and squeezed the hammer down and she jumped with the pop of a cap. Like fireworks.

A bird startled from the tree and buttered the sky with its wings.

She looked to a maple burning green in the air. Unstirred in the without wind. And the boy giggled and ran just the same as big boys do. Wielding guns and endless game show ammunition.

She looked into its branches and saw herself sleeping there. Like night. Cradled in the yawn and stretch of nature. Cuddled in the nothingness breezes. Prey only to owls and the aphids that careened from its leaves.

When she slept forever it would be forever and so now she thought it absurd to dream of sleeping. But a forever sleep in the arms of a maple tree had never sounded so delightful. The boy smacked his gum in popping bubbles like rifle fire. Crackling across the leaves. Like a deadeye.