I'm here and I am still
Where once I stood
Falling apart
And once I stood
Falling in love
I'm watering the roses
Tight tiny rows of thorns
My sneakers are wet
It's been like any other time that I'm left alone in silence, I can find something to cry about.
Pictured here are two out of three of my grandfathers, and me in overalls frog squatting. We (they’re doing the heavy lifting) we are building house 5, the rose house. The greenhouse that sits the furthest on the hill, the closest to the small house in the woods where I grew up. I don’t have much to say about this. My heart aches with love.
I think occasionally the specialness is lost on me, of growing up semi-feral with free range of the woods, and of our family’s retail garden center. but maybe its why I prefer to pee outside, and why I resist using gloves to garden, and why I sleep best at mid-day with the sun baking my eyelids and my face against the weeds, unafraid of black ants and jumping spiders.
I work at the nursery again, I’ve had stints at a teen, and young adult, and when I was very small I sold sticks and rolly pollys to customers for whatever change they had in their pocket. (how fucking charming is that?!) and now I have a desk and an email and the title of marketing and development associate, and twice a week in the spring I have a nursery staff shift where I lift heavy plants and water the rose house and some days I spend almost three hours in the car getting to and from work and I am so happy.