Gardening

My azaleas are blooming,

riots of pink, red, fuchsia, and white

framing the house and garden shed.

What I really want is a willow tree, up on the top of the ridge, long green hair flowing like a curtain I can hide behind while I rest my back against the trunk.

The flower beds are full of weeds, no bulbs or even annuals making them presentable.

My yard shows the state of my life—present, fighting for survival with no time to stop and give attention to non-cultivated plants and cast them out of the garden, like I happen to be someone on a cloud in a purple dress and hair in a non-severe black bun, saying who can eat which fruit from what tree.

I don’t have lilies for you to fawn over—no days, no callas, no cannas, no stargazers, and no tigers. The Perfects, just on the other side of the vacant lot, have hostas, daffodils, knockout roses. Their lawn is edged, and the children don’t call their mother a whore for loving their father, but I still wouldn’t want to be any of them, living a manicured life.

I have tarragon in my fire pit, in the ashes of my first love that still burns, not forever—it’s a halfway house for this herb until I get some new, clean dirt free of cat piss from the feral cat my daughter’s godmother saddled me with, the runt of the litter, a “present” for my daughter, who only speaks to me to abuse me, on behalf of her frigid ex-stepmother.

I haven’t planted anything in two years, not even tomatoes.

I remember enjoying gardening, getting my hands in the dirt, coaxing abundance from the earth. I hope it happens again.

Until then, I have my rivers and trees, including a pair of maples in the weed-choked front bed.

The trees were planted too close to the house. One day, I’ll cut them down and sit on the stumps to weed the bed, maybe even plant something I want, like the camellias and hydrangeas my mother is growing for me until I can tolerate giving life to something else just waiting to reject me.