The Garden

She was quiet and thoughtful. She took out a shovel and uprooted each heavy plant while pushing the shovel down with her flip flops. The sandals bent and dented into the shape of her sole and I told her to wear safer shoes. She was silent and shook her head with a smile.

After scooping and pulling and sometimes being hindered by rocks underground, she managed to uproot the heavy plant. I saw hundreds of roots being revealed in a dirty white and they tore and stretched like an old ship tilting and breaking, sinking slowly and heavily in the water. There are roots to everything even when things become bland and desensitizing, a habit we ritually do. There are roots in me.

She tells me she wants to plant the small bulb I manage to pluck out so that she'll remember me. And I just imagine being dead by next spring, blooming as a reminder to my family.

The bulbs look like onions. Once you slice and kill the fruit, you can throw its remains back into the soil and it'll resurrect. Keep the spark alive. Pass the baton. We are living because of what is now dead.

My body weakens when I encounter cigarettes. When I recover and smell the cigarette smoke of others, my body will know to defend itself; it is now stronger. And when I let someone hurt me, I begin to learn that I deserve better. I am now stronger. My body learns its lesson and so do I.

But life is not metaphor. We will not resurrect. We will merely be compost, a fertilizer. "Hey, it's your turn now," we'll say to the unborn. And we'll pass the baton to them.