Letters to an Unknown Girl

Dear XXXX:

Is faith in your mystery sufficient to sustain my strength in the world? Hallucinations of you have appeared all over, one flower after another, some bright and beautiful, some diseased and corrupt, and while none have revealed themselves in reality by choosing my garden in which to appear, I have faith that their species, if it exists, would flourish here.

But is faith in the unknown enough? What else could push me to keep doing this, to keep cultivating the land? I don’t know you. I’ve never met you. Every day the sun rises to its zenith and cooks the lower Earth. Weeks go by without rain. Weeds infest constantly. And the drive to pull them out, to pour water on it, to keep turning its burnt crusty skin, is a cruel, agonizing kind of prayer. Why do I keep protecting this lonely matrix? Why do I keep feeding it, instead of letting nature overwhelm it with choking thorns and greedy grubs?

Once upon a time, I thought I noticed a curious, singular little plant, a spectacular array of color and magick. It was heavy with fruit and vibrating with life, and when the wind picked up it even seemed to sing �" for no reason other than it was born to. Memory falls short when trying to pinpoint its supposed location, but there is a stronger sense of faith than usual that for once, it wasn’t my mind playing tricks on me. It was the most moving of visions, dreamlike and unforgettable, settling my heart and soothing my demons with a hint of momentary company. Where was it? Up north? The beach? The mountains? Another country? I don’t remember, and maybe I don’t want to, lest the truth of hallucination be revealed, and the brief balm it whipped for my tortured heart be dismissed as fantasy.

Before the dream-sight fades, if you do exist, let me pass a prayer along on the breeze: I don’t know where you are. I don’t know your species. I don’t know if you are the only one of your kind, or if you are cursed to stare endlessly into the darkness, facing an unholy hell of infinite isolation, begging the sun to cook you, freeing you from the bonds of agonizing loneliness. But before you give up, please know that there are hands that care, and places you can go. No one is promised an easy life, but there are some who can personally guarantee you a deeply loved one.

And even if you choose to never lay your roots here during my lifetime, there may be a faith in your mystery that pushes me to keep preparing the Earth in case you decide to move in after I’m gone. Maybe you will be drifting along on a Gulf breeze, losing and lost and looking for a place to collapse in despair. And maybe you will look down and see a small patch of warm soil, a perfect square surrounded by strangling offenders yet somehow magickally protected from them, a refuge that was clearly turned and watered deliberately by someone else. Vacant and isolated �" but clearly made for you. And maybe just noticing it will give you curiosity about the unknown possibilities beyond your own past. Maybe such a sight will warm your heart and convince you that you might not be as alone as you think.

Should you see it and be inspired to believe, my efforts will not have been in vain. It will have been worth it, just to protect your own heart from being tied up beneath the knots of alien growth, with no visions of your own to sustain you. You are not alone in the universe.

It may be a mystery, but in this fact you may have faith. Goddess give me strength.