Unravelling the weeds that choke and bind.
Scratching in the dirt, loamy and tropical against my fingers, which are normally for typing, not for digging in the dirt. I make a token effort at righting the star picket and I remember the way you cleared my weeds, that time when I went away and I didn’t come back.
And still you cleared my weeds. You’re leaving soon and you won’t ever come back because, even when we say we’ll come back, we never really come back. I didn’t. You won’t. I’m not even sure you were ever really here. I may have imagined you, imagined you like a dream half lost and half found.
Sabra lets me apply fancy words to this – re-narrativising. Though, she may spell it with a zee…
By which she means I am telling myself the story of you and I am telling it good. I see you the first time and I see you the last time and you are a clear shape against bright light and I can find the outline of you, glowing with light and you are almost an eclipse of yourself. I love you and for once, for once, you know that I loved you perfectly. Not less than him, or less than her, or more than him, or more than her.
In this story, I love you and for once it is complete and enough and a love that splits and fractures and a love that heals and holds and a love that feeds and frenzies. It is in this story enough for you to know that I was with you for as long as I could bear it, because loving someone is unbearable and hard and wonderful and lovely and cannot possibly last forever, because love is like catching glimpse of a bright flower in someone else’s garden as you drive by in the backseat of your parents’ car, inexorably you pass this lovely flower and it wilts while you are somewhere down the highway, wondering if you are home yet.
eleanor j jackson 