Red Rumped Parrots

I woke and saw the laurel twisting, shrugging off last night's dew. I saw that the morning was clear, and the last clouds swept thin and high above us on the breeze.

Goose and I went to the market today.

After coffee, we walked past the empty prison buildings. One structure's face of heavy bluestone blocks had at some prior time been pried off. The stones that remained made a ragged frame for the gloom that curdled in the building's further corners. A small white van sat abandoned in that darkness. Between us and it, sunlight tripped through a limpid panel in the roof, illuminating nothing in particular.

The inner walls were painted in white lime down to the tops of the doorways. Below it, as if stripped by some acid flood, the bare stone hid shadows. On the region of the inner wall still covered in white lime there was a schism. Inside it, a pair of red rumped parrots had made their nest. These birds mate for life, so I think they are the same pair that Goose and I saw last year. They are very handsome birds and I love them.

At the market, we bought a handful of sweet pink radishes, a loaf of caraway bread, and an armful of rainbow chard. While there we saw two complementary dogs; a svelte charcoal greyhound wearing little black boots on its front paws, and an extremely Chestertonian white bulldog.

Before leaving, we bought a bunch of linaria. Its flowers are alternately xanthous, lilac, and white. They currently occupy a white porcelain vase in the shape of a cat. Their petals remind me of pixiu with their lolling, cloudlike tongues.