100 Words: The ninety-ninth day

The ninety-ninth day unfolds like every other in thrall to water, thunderous squalls threading sunny skies all afternoon, where I sit in the grass looking out over the lake going through its changes from turquoise froth to something heavier, like gleams of gray static rimmed by the horizon’s iron line. A mother and son try laughingly to rescue a toy from a tree; an old man with stringy white hair and yellow sunglasses shuffles past, dragging a DKNY bag. These the abstracts and brief chronicles of the time. Clouds mutter, flies buzz, the world holds its breath behind its mask.