Sunday at the SoCal winery
by Elizabeth Hamilton
Nothing happened. Not really.
A Sunday in Southern California.
We went to mass, and then
had the afternoon to spend ― but no money.
Between the four of us, we procured:
two bottles of red wine, some bread and cheese,
a basket of small, sugary strawberries.
We sat on a blanket in the grass.
Watched the sunlight flicker and fade.
Afterwards, we crept home slowly,
as if we knew what was coming.
A decade later, I can still taste that velvety Merlot.
I remember the way your eyes clouded when I spoke of
what I wanted from the future,
as if the future were a parent who could be cajoled.
You let me prattle on, young and sunburned.
Now, I live in the city.
No one I know has time for picnics.
“It’s a foretaste of the Kingdom of God,”
you said on the drive home.
All the way, my hand out the window in the wind.
Elizabeth Hamilton's work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Dallas Museum of Art, The Hudson Review, and Texas Monthly, along with other publications. She has an MFA in creative writing from Seattle Pacific University and is the recipient of a Writers' League of Texas fellowship. She writes the monthly substack This Book Could Save Your Life.
