two-fourteen-twentyone
Tending to the garden of another
Planting roses and lilies and orchids so bright and so beautiful
They stretched for miles and miles on wild hills
Whilst my garden grew wan and dry and deadened with dust
Thirstily beckoning for water, for love, for care
Thoughtless and abandoned, colorless and weak
I felt that this love I gave would tirelessly vibrate out of me
Draining my bones and sucking my blood
Until I could find the right match to re-ignite my spirit
Love that surpassed palpability
One that I had carelessly given away to those
Who offered to me only the smallest centimeter of their heart
An adolescent crying under covers
Wishing my sheets were warm arms stretching over and within me
Attached to the body of a separate beating being
A mistake, I realize now. One so bold and so obvious
My gardening hose was as long and boundless as the wind
Snaking itself into the unrequited tenderness of tulip trees
But the mistake was not that I could never have that love
But that I had to search anywhere else for it
Other than within myself
That my garden needed the gaze of someone else
To ever be truly seen, to ever unapologetically shine
How silly it seems that I ever looked to others for what I had all along
She is bright and buoyant now among flowered bushes and willowed trees
She smiles with the love poured out of delicately painted watering kettles
She is alive and she is her own
by: Vanessa Fontana