I painted a picture. It's called "Front Porch Life." It shall probably be revised and reposted at some point.

Years from now, when I have grown withered and small, all I want is a porch.

A porch that wraps around a house, where sit rocking chairs that creak from beneath their red-and-yellow cushioned seats, and hangs a swinging bench that sways in the evening breeze, begging for a sip of oil at its hinges.

The roof covers the porch, which is deep enough for watching storms while bundled up in quilts with a mug of steamy tea and honey.

There is no balustrade but the bushes planted in front of the porch – thick, thicket-y, thorny rose bushes of all shades of pink and red, from which stand out one white bush and one yellow.

In the summer their scent is overwhelming, so you cannot even smell the overgrown mint floods the two small steps, though it is constantly crushed to bits by stampeding feet that elicit its sweet juice.

It freshens the stale air.

I want to see the bay from the side, but I want the front to approach the road so I can see people coming and going, and invite them to stop and chat.

They will walk up on the white, creamy stream of broken quahog shells, and cast dancing shadows in the warm, golden light that falls from the lanterns lining the curvy path.

I want to sit there as evening falls and the warmth begins to fade, listening to crickets sing and rushes stir as I knit for someone else’s expected grandchildren.

I want to sit with you in silence and feel that peculiar chill that only crawls in with a summer night until you pull a faded quilt from the old chest for me and wrap it around my shoulders.

But mostly, I want to sit and remember how we used to sit on red and yellow cushions on your front porch and be silent together. How we would talk deep into the night until your mother called down from the window above for me to leave. And we would sit quietly a while longer and then I would finally leave, but it would not matter, because the next night I would come back, and we would live our front porch life again.