been a haven for bountiful and blossoming wildlife and my wife, with a forced façade of pleasured annoyance, would glide amongst the flowerbeds, carefully planting the sunflowers, and lovingly watering the poppies. She would smooth the earth with her white coarse hands, hovering on her knees, and, after graceful ascent, her knees left barely-noticeable dents in the ground. Every day of March and April she spent a considerable amount of her energy pouring nurture and colour into the fruitful garden. On the days that the grey clouds began to gather and a heavy downpour struck, she hovered in the kitchen doorway, gazing out at her soaking flowerbeds, clutching the doorframe as if relishing its solidity,preparing to launch herself into the tumultuous drizzle. The bright lamp in the kitchen expelled a lambency of luminous intensity, which was refracted by the desperate droplets of water clinging to the aged window pane, and a spectrum was cast, suspended in inexplicable being but undeniable existence, close and far away, corporeal yet intangible: the imprint of a stunning, beloved rainbow left upon the earth, something discernible by science but an aesthetic wonder. On a winter’s day that year, a fragile cascade of snow had descended upon the village. My heavy footfalls had left a lonely trail of prints in the wide expanse of snow.The air in the central square stood still and an eerie silence enveloped the village, instilling it in benumbed algidity, delighting my wife. She sang with a restless tranquillity as we stood in the square, her fractured lament of unerring beauty bringing the town to a placidity so full of silent serenity it extended into the metaphysical. The snow- topped gingerbread houses and shops sat patiently, vociferously- muted spectators in the heavenly ghost town. Back at home I stood with guilty anxiety in the driveway. I had reversed into the driveway with sporadic bursts of acceleration and some of my wife’s best-cared-for, snow-covered yellow pansies were crushed unceremoniously beneath the back wheel
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