Yesterday, November 18, it was 70 degrees in Ohio. Confused about what to wear, I chose a light top, with a blue woolen scarf from Harrod’s my mother bought for me years ago. She has long been dead, but blue is my favorite color, and the scarf is my favorite because she gave it to me.

Mother’s favorite city was London, where Mayor Sadiq Khan has offered refuge to Americans under the Trump Administration. What would my mother make of all this? When she died, Trump was just a rich man in New York, a nobody with money. If Mother were alive, would she escape with me to London?

In truth, I am confused about everything save the weather. Yesterday, I wore a blue scarf over a tee shirt, a treasured scarf to which I had attached a safety pin in support of diversity, which like everything else is under threat. Everything is cracking up. The globe itself is cracking with earthquakes caused in part by fracking.

Yesterday, when I felt I could do something, I signed a petition to stop Myron Ebell from becoming head of the Environmental Protection Agency under the next president, America’s least responsible candidate ever, who doesn’t believe in climate change.

I believe only in the weather, its unpredictability. Today, November 19, it’s snowing and 30 degrees in Ohio. I have not stepped out of the house. I have drawn the curtains. I am watching snowflakes fall electronically on the face of my Android. And listening to the outdoor silence growing louder as night falls.

Arya F. Jenkins’s

poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction have appeared recently in journals such as Agave Magazine, Brilliant Corners, Brilliant Flash Fiction, Cider Press Review, Dying Dahlia Review, The Feminist Wire, Otis Nebula, and Provincetown Arts Magazine. Her poetry has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her flash, “Elvis Too,” was nominated for the 2017 Write Well Awards by Brilliant Flash Fiction. Ms. Jenkins writes jazz fiction for Jerry Jazz Musician, an online zine. Publications are forthcoming in Front Porch Review and Sinister Wisdom. Her second poetry chapbook Silence Has A Name was published in 2015 by Finishing Line Press.

Her latest blog is WritersnReadersII.