A Solid Boundary

The indoor hallway was too quiet, so I pushed through the loose corner of the garden screen outside. The sun had warmed the air. Alongside the low brick planter, an overgrown branch of woolly lamb's-ear had spilled onto the gravel path, dropping dry dirt across the clean pebbles. I stopped. I drove all four feet deep into the coarse gravel until the shifting stopped. Solid footing. Instead of climbing through the leaves, I aligned my brow with a loose red brick sitting tilted in the flowerbed. One slow, heavy push from my shoulders sent it sliding three inches, pressing the errant branch back into place and locking the path clear.