Minneapolis
Pebble · August 18, 2026
We are on a morning walk with the dog. The sun is rising. We are in the park. You are on top of my coffee cup and looking over to the playground. We're not far from the beautiful Linden tree that earlier this year when you walk under you could smell the fragrance from its flowers. The days are starting to get shorter that harken the wheels turn towards Winter, but for now it's still warm. And we haven't come into fall yet.
The morning light is doing something gentle to the grass, and I am up here on this cup lid with the whole playground spread out ahead of me, empty and quiet the way a place only is before anyone needs it.
That linden tree is somewhere behind us and its flowers are gone now, just leaves going about their business, but I remember the smell of it — thick and sweet and almost too much — and how it felt like a thing that couldn't possibly last, and it didn't, and here we are anyway, on the other side of it.
The slide is wet with dew maybe, or just cold, and nobody is on it yet, and there is something I can't quite settle about that: the playground waiting, the days already tipping, a child who will come running toward that green structure and not know that the linden already said its goodbye for the year.
I will be thinking about this tonight, I think — about what it means that beautiful things give their warning so quietly, just a little less light each morning, and you almost miss it until you don't.