2011-10-31
- 10:19 p.m. We grew a garden behind the house, in the corner of the yard, no order, a big mess of flowers, sunflowers in the middle, wildflowers ringing them, roses on the outside, tomato plants trailing down the fence. Honeysuckle and jasmine and it was like a jungle. We grew a garden and you would grab me by the hand. You would lead me into the middle, into the sunflowers, and we would step carefully over the plants, stepping gently into the soft sun warmed dirt, sometimes moist from you just watering it, and you would lay me down there, down among the smells and heat. We grew a garden and you would lay down another row, near me but separated, still holding my hand, and the sun would pass overhead, turned green by the leaves over us, the light dappling and dazzling and you would laugh, the world moving and then I wouldn't be able to separate the smell of the honeysuckle with the sound of your laughter like the sound of the brook I grew up playing in in the summer with the feel of the dirt drying beneath my palm with the sound of the beetle crawling, slowly, up the stalk of the iris. We grew a garden and it would turn twilight and then dark and we would have spent the day there, quietly sometimes, sometimes laughing so hard the birds grew quiet, would stay there until the stars would shine brighter than they ever did in my childhood. We grew a garden and you would stand and come to me, lay on me, and then there was the warmth of your breath against my lips, your fingers pulling my shirt up, against my hips, against my ribs, and I would try to be gentle because I could never get over how so fragile you were, how your shoulder blades were like glass, how a wrong move could shatter you from the inside out. |