Secret Garden

Author’s note: “Secret Garden” first appeared in the May 15, 2008 issue of HeavyGlow, now sadly closed for business.

No matter how many times you ask me, you won’t get in.

You won’t get in because you keep asking. It doesn’t work that way.

I remember one of the first things I planted and why. I was four years old, and I had spilled grape juice on my Sunday dress. Mother took it off and I felt like my rag dolly, Mary Jane, thrown about the room.

You wouldn’t know what that means.

Timmy Danvers held my hand in fifth grade and tried to kiss me. I was sitting in a swing on the playground and another seed was planted as I turned my head and his lips grazed my cheek. So sweet. His hand was sweaty.

I’ll tell you the seeds, but you won’t see them in their maturity. Not for your eyes.

It’s there, but it’s not for you.

What you’ve paid for with words of love, with kind thoughts and whispered confidences you will receive in full measure. But the velvet green paths with nodding flowers will be forever beyond you. The tragedy is you know it’s there, and yet you will not find the way.

****

*She’ll let you in her house
If you come knockin late at night.
She’ll let you in her mouth,
If the words you say are right.
If you pay the price,
She’ll let you deep inside.
But there’s a secret garden she hides.

****

I never question the grass stains on the sheets. Or the occasional odd plant material wadded up in the bathroom wastebasket. I don’t mention the strange implements that chitter in their box, stored on a shelf high in the garage.

Sometimes I see her hands, cracked and embedded with soil. Fingernails broken, scrapes raw and bleeding. I’ll bathe them and tend them with soothing lotion and a tender touch; she just smiles when I ask what has hurt her so.

I tend to her, and she tends to her own. She’ll be cuddled in my arms as we drift off to sleep, when her breath is my breath; my heartbeat hers, and we are as close as two people can get. This is when I’ll hear the wind whispering through new leaves, feel the heat of the sun warming my skin, the kiss of rain.

It never lasts.

I’ll find seed packets in the pocket of her sweater; these I don’t mention, either.

Sometimes her knees are sore and I’ll massage her back and shoulders. I love it when I whisper my heart’s mystery and she opens like a summer rose, fragrant and velvet. I’ll plunge and set deep, and wander the paths she affords. Most of the time, it’s enough.

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