San Rafael, Alajuela — January 11, 2025

I sat on the porch in San Rafael late that afternoon, the wood under my hand cracked and sun-bleached, grey from too many dry seasons. A small brown lizard had claimed the edge of the same plank. He held perfectly still, tail laid along the grain like he was reading it, and I tried not to shift my weight. Behind him the foliage went soft and green, the kind of green that only registers when you stop moving long enough to notice it. Later I walked to where the ridge opens west. The sun was already low, a hard orange disc above the dark layered mountains, and a thin band of cloud caught around it in orange and red. Higher up the grey clouds drifted slow across a paler yellow sky. Out toward the horizon the ridges stacked themselves into hazy blue, and on one of them I could just make out a small antenna, a thin mark against the burn. I stood there until the colour started to thin. Nothing happened, really. That was the whole point of the day.