April 2022

April 2022

The green comes back. It follows the birds, and decorates their homes in small bright leaves. The newest, greenest, unblemished brushes of color on the landscape.

The girl brings me flowers. First the cherries, then violets, and appleblossom, deadnettle, dandelions, and bittercress. She brings me flowers that she steals from the bees. She brings me flowers from far away places. She brings me rose petals from the river and those remain my favorite.

She found my secret on the porch, asking the trees how long they’ve been here. She noted them evergreen and arching over the roof. She marked them in each corner. She came inside and held her glass brick like a talisman and spun. She knows the secret now. The girl has recognized every still thing is a compass.

The girl knows I am a rose, with cedar trees at the ordinal points and she is determined to charm their name away from them. She tries to flirt and chatter and guess. Her guesses are terrible. The cedars keep their name and the compass keeps its point and the girl sits at the window and still doesn’t know which way she’s looking. But she is happy in the center of the rose, in me.

So happy she cries. So happy she leaks. So happy her faucets won’t turn all the way off and I’m at risk of water damage. I don’t mind, so long as she keeps bringing rose petals.

They are my favorite.

I open my windows to the rain, to the new wind, to the last of the snow that cannot help but miss me.

“I’m bad at goodbyes,” the girl says, green as the new leaves and watching the snow.

She is bad at many things, so I don’t know why she’d worry about this one just yet. The sloping second floor might be a problem one day, just like her left knee and right ear. We have problems that aren’t problems and we won’t borrow worries from them.

The girl packs her sweaters. The girl calls her mother. The girl lies in my shade, on the gravel by her car. “I’m bad at goodbyes,” she says. But I don’t listen. I only send her out for flowers. She brings back lilac, and mushrooms, and a pocket of dirty, washed up, rose petals from the river.

Looking West,

the apple house