#Haiku Happenings #3: Jules’ latest #haibun for my current #haikai challenge!

116 Landlord’s Waiver

full sugar moon shines
on her vanishing footprints
tugging tide keeps them

all paths that anyone has
walked, chris-cross the ocean floor

Cain tried hard to resolve why Margoth was the way she had been. Perhaps she possessed some incurable mania, a cacoethe that allowed for her cavil attitude (to raise irritating and trivial objections) toward most things that the people around her seemed to do. Her stoic quality to prod specific negative behavior seemed to bring the woman joy. Margoth was most often the slimiest of worms who could draw the sap of life out of even the most kind person. As Lee continued to listen, her own saliva seemed to dry up – Lee had not banked on being so emotionally drained, and at last got up to get a glass of water.

Dawg barked from outside and broke the mood, he only wanted to get in, out of the snow-shower. The wind blew a leaf to smack into the kitchen doors window pane and everyone jumped.

Sam commented that some family inheritance was only about the money. He recited a story about a domestic call he’d gone on when the neighbors told him to just keep walking till the music got loud. The arguing people were trying to drown out their yelling. It was a group of siblings who were doing pretty much anything they could to not follow the footprints laid out in a will that they didn’t agree with. None seemed willing to turn over a new leaf of reconciliation or respect.

A faint scent of roses wafted in with Dawg. Maybe it was time for a change of venue. Lee suggested they go to the barn and see if they could find any of Cain’s family things…

©JP/dh
— Read on julesinflashyfiction.wordpress.com/2020/03/09/nd-3-9-116-landlords-waiver-4p/