The Gardner

When we met and you squeezed my hand, it felt like you wanted to hold me as much as I needed to be held.

In all the little ways, you made the space safe. You gave me shelter.

I was not darkness, then, so much as lightless, and I wanted to stay in the warmth of your candle glow until my cellar became a greenhouse again. It already felt like my hand had roots that were sprouting deep into all that was good and sane, like the pale leaves on my soul were turning, hopeful, towards a new source of light.

I knew nothing about you. I knew only that I was falling for you, in a way that was very much against my rules. After months of masochistic sterility, tender shoots of lust and joy burst through soil I had surely poisoned. 

I came out of hibernation flashing your bruises like gold badges with my happiness a loaded gun. Anytime I opened my mouth, bullets written with your name flew out and I couldn’t stop the maelstrom. You had made me feel wildly alive, and I was addicted to the violence of it.

My bruises started to fade and I stayed up later so that I couldn’t watch them vanish. I indulged in the reckless joy of sunburns and strawberry stains, sharpening my tongue on summer lemons and my teeth on shaggy plum pits.

I bit into life, and for you I grew. I grew.