Your weekly letter came in today’s mail, scrawled on a pink paper garden dotted with violets.
When we first began this postal exchange, you were suffocating in the dark winter of depression, gasping for breath and praying for sunlight. Your writing shifted between thorny anger refusing to be subdued and pain flourishing relentlessly, overtaking everything else. Every week, I’ve shivered in the frigid air as I struggled though the ice-crusted nettle weeds killing the flowers and strangling hope to death.
But today, at the sight of new growth, I felt the promise of summer. Like crocuses pushing through the thawing earth, I see the seedlings of recovery and optimism in your note, straining toward the sun and ready to bloom. Were I a botanist, and could graph the tone and lightness emerging tentatively from your words on the page, my graph lines would climb slowly toward that place on the hill, where budding wildflowers and young green grasses sway in the spring breezes.
Sweet. and sweetly said.
ReplyDeleteI had to read this one again and again, letting the words roll around in my mind, gathering the sights and sounds of renewal, hope, restoration and discovery.
ReplyDeleteYou've written the botanist, the garden, the seasons of the soul and so much, much more...
you left me with a smile...
ReplyDeleteLou: Thank you, kind sir.
ReplyDeleteTi: I'm so glad you this spoke to you. One of these days, I'll tell you what the inspiration for it was.
Brian: And this is me :-) smiling back!
Mama Zen: Thank you!
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