With each season thereis the reminder that we are finite, our warm days,our weeks remaining to say we adore spring. We ache to livelonger, remember better, record as perfectly as possible. We think: Ifonly I could document my way out of death and begin our diaries. I wish it weretrue, I have so many photographs and nowhere to turn immortal. The Pacific coast inOctober is the closest I have felt to the afterlife, one long backgroundof mountains muscling out from velvet sea. Landscape can be joy,I learned that winter, or autumn, blind to seasons in the eternal sun. I counted joylike siblings: sister holds the ways to make a dark place home, strings joyat our doorstep with sand dollars pulled from the cold surf. Brother's mind like a wingspins me close enough to truth to touch it. I take each one on my wing.Lucky I belong in the middle, protected from firsts or lasts, ends, beginnings. A nasturtium blossomis made of circles, celebrating centrality, lucky to have a long flowering season. They blossomfrom summer to fall on the coast. Spicier the closer to dusk they are eaten. I wish it weren't impossibleto be joyous infinitely. To blossom perennially, evergreen. I want to witness my brother's life. I want tohear my sister laugh forever. I want the sweetmiddle immortal as a photograph, a circle. I thought it impossiblefor the entire flower to be edible. What dies gives. Even the blossom.