Love and Pistils
Denise Robbins
December 31
New Year’s Eve: the masses seek champagne and sex and new ways to forget who they are, and I’m alone inside my house, trapped in the memory of who I am.
Not quite alone. My new child sits in my lap: a hyacinth flower, whom I love very much. Her petals have the blue of deep space, a black hole. She is growing very well. Lustrous.
And the monstrous singing plants outside. They’re here, too.
They are singing a chorus of horrors untold. I’m not being trite; those were the first words in their song tonight:
The rest of the song has been mostly hums and oohs, percussed by bangs on the windows and thumps on the wooden siding of my house. A mournful tune, a minor key, slow and steady, a low thrumming chant with thorns plucking branches like the string of a Greek lute. It’s a slowly building tune that never breaks but circles around back to the beginning, and the plants move in kind, dancing, holding one another up in a restrained roundabout, punctuated with staccato kicks and bursts.
It began when the sun went down, and on it will go until morning comes, when the monsters will remain where I buried them and the graveyard will turn back into a blank sodden patch of dirt. Only at night do they come out of hiding. It starts with the branches of the old oak tree, sprouting from the ground, then the vines of ivy around it. Then come the thorns, the twigs, the leaves, the flowers, everything that is added and put in their place in this dreadful scene. Who created it? Why is it here? I’ve stopped trying to understand. My plants have died, but this is… something like alive.
I’ve convinced myself not to be nervous: the blinds are shut tight and the doors and windows are locked, so no matter what, they will not get in.
But still.
The thought of them makes my teeth chatter, the crooked sticks and clicking nails and teeth of thorns and twisting vines and flowers the color of blood. The thing induces a mythical horror in my chest. It could almost be beautiful if it weren’t dripping with the entrails of its dinner: the guts of the night, the blood of a squirrel mixed in a mash of compost.
Tonight it’s worse than it ever has been. The singing. The chanting. The banging. The ivy vines have crawled from my backyard, over the roof, down to my front door. I’ve locked it but they keep pulling on the doorknob, twisting it in time to the song, knocking after each stanza. The quivering mass of plants, dead and alive, are snapping and snipping at everything in range and hungering most of all for me.
They’re singing now in a language I both do and do not understand; it’s less the words that matter but the feeling, this feeling, it reminds me of Sam. And my brother. No.
I cannot leave my house tonight, or any night. I have only my hyacinth to keep me company. To her I can finally admit: I’m fucked.
I’m wearing the red socks I once tried to bury, the ones the monsters expelled from the earth. I pull them up to my knees and my knees to my chest. Tomorrow, when the morning comes, the beastly plants will wither away from the sun. They will crawl back over the roof and to their rightful place. They will go back to where they belong: dead underground in my backyard graveyard.
Then, well, I don’t know.
November 30
I’m in a beautiful mood, and to celebrate, I bought a new plant. A potted hyacinth. The name hyacinth rolls off the tongue, as the aroma rolls around its many purply blue petals, which burst outward from the stem in a stacked spiral, a shape that says hello.
And today I fell in love.
Does that make it sound like I fell in love with the hyacinth plant? Perhaps it does and perhaps I did, as far as these things can go. It cannot cuddle, but it is soft, and I can stroke its plump little petals, from the middle of each one to the tips, and I can say hello, you living thing; you are my child, you came from me. Though I purchased it post-blossom from the garden center attached to my church. If I had purchased a bulb, I would’ve needed to grow it outdoors, and well, the outside is not very nice to plants right now. It’s very cold.
And there are those monster plants out back.
Anyways.
Today I fell in love with the man who handed me Madam Purple. The man with the plant at the plant store. Nico, from the garden center, who could, in fact, be the love of my life.
I told him my predicament: I have been through a year. A year of plant-heartbreak and plant-loss. I did not tell him about Sam. Or my brother. But I did tell him I wanted someone to support me. I mean something. I mean a plant. A plant that would be there every day to greet me when I woke up and when I returned home. One that would understand if I made a mistake. One that would last.
Nico then sold me the bright little purply plant which I fell in love with on sight. He told me how to take care of it. His voice filled me with life and warmth, and I thought, well, here is a man who can keep things alive.
His soil-stained hands brushed mine as he took my cash at the register, intentionally, maybe, yes. He smiled at me with lively eyes and slightly crooked teeth, and I could tell, soon, the love would be returned.
Tomorrow I’ll go back to the garden center. For fertilizer or a new watering pot. Maybe I’ll even go back to church. It looked so beautiful in the sunlight today: the dome standing guard with shining light over trees that will soon become bare.
But maybe not. Tomorrow we’ll see. Today is a new day, and tomorrow is another one. Now, I pray, this plant will live.
November 6
Today was a grievous day.
Today I said goodbye.
It’s Morpheus the mint plant. He’s dead.
They told me he was practically unkillable. You sprinkle in a few drops and don’t smash it with a sledgehammer. Well, I own no sledgehammer, and sprinkled every day, yet here we are.
I invited Rhea to attend Morry’s funeral. It was daylight, so there was no funny business in my backyard graveyard. It was just an empty plot of soil and rocks. Underneath the soil: a dozen plants and Sam’s old socks.
Rhea was late. I paced, anxious as I waited in the backyard. I was alone with my thoughts and my dead plant, feeling sorry for myself, and once I started feeling sorry for myself about my plants, it led to feeling sorry for myself about my love life and how alone I felt, (and it almost led me to feeling sorry about my twin brother), and I couldn’t let that happen, because I was in the prime of my life and beautiful enough, I hope, at least, I don’t look in the mirror anymore for fear of seeing his eyes look back at me. Somewhere out there, one or several loves of my life were waiting for me.
I don’t remember sitting down, but when Rhea found me, I was kneeling in the dirt, crying softly on the ground. I didn’t realize I was crying until she tapped me on the back and there were tears on my face. I don’t know. There have been a lot of funerals this year. Mostly by choice. Mostly for my plants. I’ve loved my funerals. I’ve loved saying goodbye in the sunlight to plants that are meant to die. I don’t know why this one bothered me so.
I quickly wiped away the tears. I berated Rhea for being late. She berated me for living in the suburbs. Then we began the funeral. She brought her prayer book, led a few psalms. Mercy on the departed Morpheus. Then came the music. I played on my lute, she on her flute. We danced a Greek folk jig. We kicked and squatted with proper posture. No smiling. The restraint of emotion: I needed it. I needed to hold myself in. It reminded me of my dance teacher, Titus. So beautiful. So serious. No laughs. Only nods of approval.
Titus. I haven’t thought about him in a long time. Let’s keep that memory away. Titus, Sam, my brother… they’re not here, and we’ll keep it that way.
Rhea wanted to stay for dinner, but the sun was dropping and I didn’t want her to see what happened at night. Before she left, the graveyard rustled and a humming noise wheedled through the air. We were sitting in the kitchen drinking tea when it began. I’ve learned to tell the sounds apart from one another. The deep booms are a branch of the old oak tree. The shrill notes are sticks from the lemon tree. I hear the thwap of a sunflower stem on the siding, the thrum of mint sliding back and forth on the window, the murmur of poppy, the rumble of ivy, the twang of rosebushes and the loud crooning of the daffodils—always the attention hogs even in death. They picked up the tune of the psalm from earlier. Rhea asked me where that music was coming from, but I told her I didn’t hear it and rushed her to her car.
One more plant won’t make a difference in whatever is going on out there. Mint is a healing plant. Mint kills bacteria. It heals through death. Perhaps Morpheus, in death, will heal the monsters that sing for my horrid life.
September 2
Mint is a healing plant. It heals burns, clears canker sores, prevents wrinkles, lowers blood sugar levels, and quiets constipation. This information is according to the beautiful man with the crooked teeth at the garden center. I don’t know if he was joking. He said nothing about healing a broken soul.
I wondered if she had said it yet.
That girl. That word: Love. It looked like she and Sam had said it to each other already, when I saw them together.
I wonder how long it took. I wonder how long they’ve been dating. Probably several months by now. I wonder how they met. I wonder how long he mourned for me before meeting her. If he mourned.
My mind has been humming all day. My ears have been popping and ringing. The ringing in my head was so loud I almost didn’t notice the music from my backyard graveyard when I got home tonight.
Mint has antiseptic, analgesic, and anti-inflammatory properties, the man said. It kills bacteria. It kills to heal.
August 30
I’m still shaking.
Today I saw Sam.
I was looking in the window of the new ramen restaurant in the public square. Freezing cold air conditioning blasted from the big bay windows. Steel siding bookended the windows in an imperial array. It looked cold inside, all steel and glass, where warmth would go to die. Despite the hot weather, people inside were bundled up with scarves up to their noses and hats down to their eyebrows.
They all looked so cold, I couldn’t help but gape at the miserable freezing people inside—including Sam.
It was definitely a gape, there’s no way to deny it. And the gape was directed, incidentally, in his direction, for he was sitting in the bay window right in front of me. I gaped for a full twenty seconds before I even noticed I was staring, indirectly, right at him.
Sam had certainly seen me gawking. Now he was staring intently at his food. He leaned so close to his ramen bowl I worried he would burn his nose, that nose so round and delicate, like the rest of his face, his bright eyes and young jaw.
And now that I saw it was him, I had to look and see who he was with. It was a woman. Yes, it was a woman. He sat with a woman with straight brown hair and eyelashes you could see from space. She was looking at him and smiling. Her cheeks were full and round and fulfilled. She looked like she never feared the cold or growing old because she was happy to be there, right then, with a ramen spoon in her hand, with a man she loved slurping up ramen strands in front of her.
I saw Sam and the world didn’t stop. I saw Sam and a thunderstorm didn’t roll in. I saw Sam and I felt nothing at all. There he was. I didn’t wait for the memories to assault me. I looked away. I moved. Down the street. Towards my empty home. I veered left where I normally veer right, to make a stop before I went home. I veered like I did not have a choice, like my chest decided for me, leaning over deeply to the left so my feet had to follow to catch me.
My chest pulled me left and forward and left again, and there I was at the garden center, buying a planted mint.
August 15
Happy Death Day to me. Today’s the day our sweet, lovely Mary went to sleep and turned into heavenly dust. The monster plants are celebrating this mournful night in the backyard as I sit here trying to forget.
I’m trying to forget my own monsters. The loves I have lost. Lilies, poppies, ivy, daffodils, lemons. Sam. Titus. My brother.
They’ve grown. And how vicious they’ve become. How I have underestimated them.
I peeked through the curtains earlier with a flashlight, but I regret it. They’re moving about in a vicious, consuming waltz that makes my stomach churn. Whatever is within reach, the plants catch, mash up, spit out, stomp, throw into the air. They’ve stripped the ground underneath them bare.
They are coming to my door. Every day they inch closer. They grab the grass and pull it in and pull themselves, one short inch at a time. They are coming for me.
And only me.
And all night long they sing:
Heed… heed… heed… heed… me…
I am not so stupid as to test them again. Yesterday, I left work as the light grew low. I made it home when there was still a peek of light before the sun took its leave. I grabbed a branch-chopping-sized hatchet and walked to the backyard graveyard. And I waited for them to arrive.
As the night came over the sky, as a silence blanketed the atmosphere until I heard the first creaks of oak crack through the dirt patch, I waited. Twisted and gnarled, the oak branches emerged, twirling upwards at a pace slow and steady. I waited. Just long enough before the other plants could arise and take position for their nightly song and dance.
Then the singing began:
The song rang in my ears. And continued:
It called me.
I felt no fear, just warm. The song was welcoming. It made me think I was doing something right. The twig-snapping drums of the night were no enemies. The lively song in my backyard was not to be feared. It was an extension of the earth, of the plants I had borne; it was alive, and perhaps that was what I wanted all along. I drew close.
Along came a bat. I heard the wings flap. Then something from the dead plants lashed out and grabbed it. The batbird squeaked and was taken down into the mash. There was a commotion, a rustling, a crescendo.
The squeaking stopped. The music stopped. The bat was no more.
My heart seized. Without thinking, I turned back and ran inside. Now here I am, sobbing on the couch.
In death, my monster plants are more alive than ever. I never believed in life after death, but I cannot deny what lies before me.
Yet there is nothing heavenly about this scene. Far from it. It recalls Dante and Hades and the songs of hellfire. Can hell exist on its own without heaven? Where does my brother live?
For now, I celebrate the Dormition of the Theotokos with baklava and filo treats. Soon I will sleep. Then the sky will lighten, and the sun will battle them back, put the monsters back where they came from, down in the dirt for a permanent rest. As the sky lightens, so will my heart, and the light will destroy my monsters, letting me begin anew.
Please, God, if you are there, let me begin anew.
April 2
I met Sam for a drink.
Well, I had a drink. He had moussaka.
I had been waiting for this for so long. I want to rebuild a friendship with him. So I happen to still be madly in love with him. So what. He agreed to meet for a drink because I told him I wanted to be friends. I wanted to prove how good a friend I could be. I just want to talk. Drinks were on me.
We met for a drink but he got moussaka. We met at the little Greek place by his house and he was quiet. Cold. Short answers, only when asked.
How’s your mom? I asked.
Fine.
That’s good.
I leaned back and sipped my wine. Greek folk tunes whined. I waited to see if Sam would say something unprompted. He did not.
Are you angry? I asked.
No.
Oh.
The wine was bitter and vinegary and getting worse with every sip. I gulped it down, plastered on a smile and launched into a story about my day. I can’t remember what I talked about. I just talked. He smirked and nodded at the appropriate places. I kept going. I ordered another glass of the same wine. I asked if he wanted any. He said no. I showed him pictures of my plants. I bought six of them. I did not tell him they had died. His solemnity did not break. I talked and hoped and wished and smiled, but on the inside I was wilting.
Finally I said, I’m sorry. I said, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything.
He said nothing.
I’m sorry I ruined everything.
Silence.
I’m sorry. I’ve realized it’s all my fault. All me. I’m sorry. Since I broke it, can I be the one to fix it, please? If I broke it, I can fix it. You break it, you buy it. Ha ha.
He finished his moussaka without saying a word.
I changed the subject to something we could talk about easily. Mutual acquaintances, favored dog breeds. I don’t know, I forget. Underneath the small talk I wished I could tell him how much I cared. Sam, whom I loved more than I have ever loved anyone ever. Sam, who made my heart want to burst when I slept next to him on a twin bed in a hostel in Mexico City, when we snuck in two for the price of one. Sam, who lent me his warm red socks, who taught me how to eat a taco without spilling. Sam, who told me every day how lucky he was to be with me when we were together.
I was ready to be patient. I was ready to rebuild something. I still am. If only he would let me.
March 12
There’s something afoot in my backyard. It is keeping me from sleeping this strange, uneasy night.
Sam texted me earlier. I’m working hard at not thinking about him, but he texted me, so. A joke about Lent. “The fast is not fast.”
But I wasn’t in the mood for bad jokes. Apparently I’m not over it. Water over, around, flooding the bridge. No, this made me remember how I loved him so much it hurt, how miserable I felt after it ended. No, this reminded me that it was done, that he was dating other people, Rhea told me so. But so am I. His name is Titus.
I didn’t respond.
Then I invited Titus over. I told him I was having a bad day. He brought me a lemon. He smiled and said, If life gives you lemons, squeeze them into the eyes of your enemies.
It made me laugh, so he went on: When life gives you lemons, go to the store to buy sugar too, otherwise it will be a pretty sour lemonade.
Obviously, this joke fell flat. He said, well, then, sorry about your day. We sat on the back porch in silence as the sun went down.
That’s when I realized it wouldn’t work out. It wasn’t the bad joke itself. It was the nothingness I felt in response. If there was something there, there would be a tenderness, an appreciation of how hard he tried to make me feel better. But there was nothing.
I pushed away the thought and snuggled into his shoulder. The back porch light burned out again. It was easy in the darkness to forget who he was.
Like that we sat and watched the rose bushes move in the night. The wind picked up. It cast my hair about my head. It whipped up sticks and branches from the bushes behind the backyard graveyard. In a great rush of wind, a giant branch snapped off the oak tree, and several flew off the rose bushes at once.
Ow! Titus squealed. A branch from the rose bush had hit him in the wind. A thorn stuck into his cheek.
We went inside. I pulled out the thorn with tweezers. The blood wasn’t that bad. I wiped it off and rubbed Neosporin into the wound, put a Band-Aid on.
Maybe Titus is a Band-Aid for me, and soon we will say goodbye. A temporary fix, slapped onto my heart to keep anguish from pooling out. Band-Aids have their purpose, too. They hold the surface together while the real healing goes on underneath.
Except, I don’t know how much I am healing underneath.
February 1
I’ve read that I should build a new life for myself, move on from my heartbreak and grief. So today I bought six plants. If I can take care of myself and take care of these plants, I think that’ll be a good start.
One day I’ll be a new person.
That’s what “they” say.
Here’s what I want: to have an ethereal garden home, to be surrounded by love and life. I won’t be sad any longer. I won’t be yearning.
I have lost so much. But now I have my six new flowering plants, and I love them. Tomorrow perhaps I will learn what they are.
Today is a new day, and tomorrow is another one. Today is the beginning of my new life.
January 2
Hello, me.
When I sat down to write in my journal today (by journal I mean Word document), I didn’t feel like scrolling through what I had written last. Instead I am starting the new entry at the top! I’ve decided I will begin each entry at the top of the last.
Not to be arrogant, but I think that’s brilliant. It will make it easier for me to sit down and plop out words right away. And it feels right: it will allow me to begin each entry as a new beginning. Every day is a new day, every moment is the beginning of the next.
Besides, this way I don’t have to reread anything. I don’t have to think about what happened the day before. Sam. Titus. My brother.
Goodbye, old me. Hello, world! I’m ready, ready now, to put the past behind me. Don’t tell me I’m not. This is my year, and this year is just for me.
January 1
Goodbye to the worst year of my life.
This has been the lowest I have ever felt. Because I am so dreadfully in love with someone who won’t let me love him anymore.
Not because he doesn’t love me. No, I’m sure he does. But he’s too proud to take me back. Too proud to look like he crawled back to the one who dumped him.
It was mutual. Okay? In the moment, it felt mutual.
It was made easier by Titus, though.
Titus, who sought me out.
Titus, who was confident. Titus the self-assured. Titus the meditative. Titus, the best dancer I’ve known. Dark of skin to Sam’s pale. Dark of hair to the blonde. Never questioned himself or what he was doing with his life. He seemed… stable. But perilous at the same time. Like a bundle of clichés. Talldarkhandsome. But it’s the truth. He made me feel like a cliché myself. A frightened girl in a bad relationship, ready to be saved by a stranger.
Titus, who led the church dance group, and was himself the epitome of Greek folk dance: right angles, straight postures, strong, sturdy, lean. The dancing: slow, squatting low to the ground, pointing your toes, everything restrained but ready to burst with emotion, movements deliberate and building to something big, every bend of the waist filled with meaning, every head bob a turn towards God.
Titus, whom I met at my twin brother’s funeral three months ago. I told Sam not to come. Titus sang a mournful tune while half my soul was lowered into the ground. He had my brother’s eyes and eyebrows. His voice was so beautiful it made my tears feel like heaven. He sang sadness into the deep pit of my heart, as though he discovered the emptiness I felt there, which I had not realized existed, and filled it with song. And he danced at the funeral reception, and I danced too, and everyone joined, and then it was he and I, elbow to elbow, kicking and twirling, and he invited me to join the church dance group. He said he could see how much I needed it. And I did need it. I needed the songs and I needed the movement and I needed something to fill my mind with thoughts of life, not death.
The church tells me I should be happy about my twin brother’s death. They say he’ll be revived when Christ comes. He’ll spend eternity in heaven. It’s a joyous occasion.
I can’t explain how much I hate them for that. What about me, here, now? My brother is my soul. I’ve never lived without him. We’ve always been there for each other. Singing to each other. Knowing what we were thinking without saying anything at all. But now there’s no one else in my head. Only me. Without his voice, I know: They’re lying. No spirit lingers, nothing awaits the Second Coming. There is none of him left. There is nothing.
It was Titus who later asked me for coffee after dance class one snowy day. He touched my shoulder as I was packing up my dance shoes. His hand was strong. He said it was nice to have a friend his age at the church. He said he wanted to talk. To get to know me.
Titus sought me out just as Sam and I were falling apart. Did he know?
He couldn’t know. Because he didn’t know about Sam. He couldn’t know that Sam became a tiny thought, an inkling, in my head overwhelmed by death. He could not know how jealous Sam had become of my grief.
I said yes.
When Titus and I arrived at the café, Sam called me. I put my phone on silent. Then Sam texted me asking where I was, when I could call him back. I lied. I told Sam I wanted to read at the café near dance class. Just want to finish up this chapter before I head home through the snowstorm, I’ll call you then.
Titus paid for my coffee. I told him not to, but he did.
I was nervous, at first. He asked me questions. There was no idle chatter. He wanted to know what “moved” me, what “drove” me, how I felt about the Greek church, about God, about parents, about my brother, about death. I hardly remember what I said, but I was compelled to speak from something inside my chest. Something true.
Titus listened. The laughter was frightened out of me. I explored my grief instead. For the first time, I could talk about my brother. I couldn’t speak of him with Sam. But now, with my brother’s death and my brother’s eyes before me, here it was, the dark place in my chest, and I felt I could live in it, I could dance in it.
I told Titus everything about my brother. I told him about the songs we’d sung to each other since we were little, songs we would make up to soothe one another. The songs were childish and simple but never failed to cheer me up when I was hurting, or him when he was sad —until the end, when nothing I sang could take his pain away after he got sick, so sick, but didn’t need to die, not then. But he asked me to let him die anyway and I said yes. I said yes. I gave him the pills he wanted so desperately. He was in pain every moment, and I felt it without looking. So I let my brother die.
Titus listened. Then, when I was done talking, he asked if he could please have a sip of my coffee. It was the perfect thing to say. He took in my grief and he showed me I was still here. I said okay, have a sip, and held it out. When Titus took the coffee mug, his hand grabbed mine.
He did not smile. I did not smile. I was trapped in his gaze.
There, on the table, our hands interlinked. There was a little static shock on my mitten.
I stopped talking and closed my eyes. My grief melted. My heart cried out. I wanted to feel it for a minute. I wanted to live in those hands, in that static, through my mitten, in the memory of now that was so present it made my throat constrict, the feeling of my brother, it was somewhere; his voice wasn’t in my head but it was there on the table, in the coffee, in my mitten. I don’t know how long I kept my eyes closed and my fingers in those of Titus. Eventually I pulled my hand back to my lap.
When I opened my eyes, there was Sam, staring in the window of the café.
I stared back. The horror on his face…
I rushed out without saying goodbye to Titus. I pulled on my coat and hat as I burst through the doors to find Sam outside. He was already walking away. The wind whipped my hair from my face. I jogged to catch up to him, then walked by his side in silence. Let’s talk, I said. He didn’t say anything back, just picked up his pace. I reached for his hand, grabbed his fingers. He pulled it into a fist and shoved it into his pocket. I tightened my scarf around my neck. There’s a park up there, I said. Let’s sit and talk. Please.
The park was empty. The cold had scared away even the squirrels. We approached a snow-covered bench. Let me wipe it down, I said. But he sat on top of the snow, crunching it underneath his jeans, and put his head in his hands.
The snow was falling into his hair, turning it into crystals. I asked if he wanted to borrow my scarf, it was so cold. Finally he turned to me and said something: No.
And then there was yelling. There was yelling and crying and why couldn’t he be okay nothing happened nothing would have happened I’m sorry I lied I didn’t want to make him jealous I didn’t want to hurt him. His hand was on your hand, he said. It was an accident, I said, he grabbed the coffee. Were you holding hands? No, of course not. Were you kissing? In the light of day? Or were you planning to go to his place for that? How many times have you met? How many times have you fucked? Are you even taking dance classes? What else have you lied about? Is he a good fuck? Is he bigger than me? Is he better than me? No, no, no, never, yes, nothing, no, no, no!
I didn’t cheat, but I lied, and to Sam, there was no difference.
I asked, Why were you at the café? Did you track me down?
Were you going to break up with me before you fucked him? When are you going to break up with me? Please, if you’re going to cheat, break up with me first.
We yelled ourselves dry. We walked to the metro, exhausted. Depleted. Held each other while we waited for the orange line train to take us in different directions. There were delays. Snow. His train was cancelled. I invited him to mine. He said yes.
As we waited, he said quietly: You deserve him. You deserve better than me.
It’s you I want, I said. You are all that I want. This was a mistake.
He said nothing but he let me grab his hand. He let me put my head on his shoulder.
Maybe we could move in together, I whispered into his neck. Maybe we could buy a house.
As we were falling asleep he said: This is a big deal.
I said: I know.
We fell asleep, happy. We woke up, sedated.
He texted me right after I left my apartment for work. He asked me, Are you stopping for coffee on the way? Are you meeting him for lunch? How will I know you’re at work? How will I know anything anymore?
Will you ever trust me again? I texted.
I don’t know, he texted.
Maybe it’s not going to work out, I texted.
Whatever you say.
I want it to, I texted. I love you. I love you so much. But I worry you won’t trust me again.
Whatever you say.
Whatever I say…
He dropped off a box of my things and told me I could keep his socks, the warm red ones I always borrowed. I stopped going to dance class. I stopped going to church. Everything I could stop, stopped.
Now I regret it. I want so badly to fix what I broke. But he won’t let me. He’s too proud. He doesn’t want to look like he crawled back, and I regret it.
But today is a new day, and tomorrow will be better. And the next day after that. I must believe this. My biggest love has disappeared and half my soul has died, but after death comes healing. For all that, I am grateful.
Tomorrow is a new day, I sing to myself as I fall asleep. I sing a song my brother would have made for me. I sing the chorus of my hopes and my mistakes; I hum, and my hopes take root inside my chest, grow through my veins; I sing, and my songs soar into the night.
