I went for a walk because I wanted to feel my feet move over pavement, wanted to traverse something solid and unmovable, wanted to find comfort in knowing there is something my weight cannot influence. Strong winds had come with the rain from last week and branches lay tangled in the shrubbery along the sidewalk- the closer we move to heaven, the further we have to fall before we hit the ground.

In the yard of a big home, painted red with white trim and looking slightly like a barn (why was this ever an attractive building style?) lay a crumpled tulip, its lavender petals covered in mud, its stem twisted like a broken limb. It looked so pathetic in the marred grass, still brown and soggy from the winter thaw, and it took me a moment to realize the tulip was not real at all, but rather a silk flower that must have fallen from the fist of a small child or blown from a dumpster where it had been discarded in favor of a more seasonal arrangement on someone's end table. I looked closer and saw the wire coming from the bottom of the stem, the frayed ends of the silk petals, the water stains on the fabric.

The pavement on which I stood was cracked and uneven, warped from months of ice, snow, heat. In the summer it'll need to be repaired. I knelt beside the flower and brushed the dirt away, leaving streaks of mud on the fabric as well as on my fingerprints and chipped nail polish. I picked it up and carried it with me for awhile, twisting it between my cold fingers, until I came to a bridge that passes over a small stream. I cast the tulip- if you can call such thing a tulip- into the water and watched it float away. How futile are our attempts to amend this world when everything is just temporary.