Late Summer Cloud Gradient by Victoria Sepulveda
California has had its fair share of fires lately. Families displaced, homes lost. As I’ve moved through this last year, it has been not just a time of loss but also a chance for new starts; planting, replanting, transplanting. May you all be safe in this unpredictable world.
Photo Courtesy Brian Landis
Victoria Sepulveda
Late Summer Cloud Gradient
It’s getting cool enough to plant lettuces. Fires burn to the north but the air is sharp and open. People have been asking when I found my voice. I want to say early, but I’m not sure what my voice even sounds like, right now. I pull up the barren tomatoes and mix fresh compost into the soil, sprinkling arugula, spinach, and fat barbed chard seeds onto the earth before brushing a little black dirt over it all. It’s like putting the seeds to bed. I think I want my voice to sound like music, balance my melodies like coins, spin them on their ridged edges. But even music changes over time. It’s so quiet outside, just the wind in the fruit trees. Soon they’ll drop their leaves, sleep too. Each new season is my favorite.
Toast was a weekly email newsletter that ran from July 2018 to March 2019. All of the pieces from Toast’s run and more can be read in Solo Novo 5/6.
- Glenna Luschei, Abiding Publisher and Editor Emeritus
- Benjamin Daniel Lawless, Editor in Chief
- Tom Harrington, Contributing Editor
- Rena Ferro, Managing Editor
- Brian Landis, Photographer and Advisor