After dusk I walked out back.
Walked across the soft ground still rejoicing from the rain of several days ago. Walked in that evening light that follows the invisible-gray but precedes the black. Walked with a pail in my hand. A steel pail with a lid. A lid covering the compost. The compost filling the pail.
I walked into the back with the compost pail and dug with my hands in the warm compost pile among the dark shadows under the canopy of the Elms and Crepe Myrtles and dumped the bucket in the hole and tossed the jetsam back on top.
And in that after-dusk, before-night, kinda-grey, kinda-dark evening light, I walked back across the soft ground into the golden light of the patio. And I stepped back inside knowing that tonite I won’t wake up in the pitch black wondering what on earth that smell is.