You tend. You tend, weed, water – you care.

 

The spring comes, and I wait, both patient and impatient for my loves to show. The winter was long, but I persevered, longing for the ice gathered in-between the hairs on my arms to thaw. I sat still on my darling soil. 

 

The soil sits still too. I feel it inhaling and exhaling when I rest my hand tenderly on top of it. I breathe with it – try to imagine my loves pushing up through the soil. I have spent these lingering months keeping warm, with all the generosity I could muster. 

 

When my loves come, I hope they will revive me in their bloom, because winter has left me weary. The soil lets out a sigh, and I wonder why. When I raise my eyes to the cloud that gathers above, I know. I hum in appreciation as precipitation kisses my cheeks like an old lover. 

 

I caress the soil lightly with gentle fingertips.

 

The rain comes, and she comes warm. She is heavy and persistent.

 

I cannot bear to leave, and so I neglect the shelter of my little house and stay, through dusk, dawn, dusk, dawn, and another. 

 

The Spring makes love to my soil and she responds in earnest, liberated. She blossoms under the damp weight of its touch. The showers soak into my skin as I watch, finally contented. I shake the dew from my shoulders, and I feel an irritation beneath my skin as I do. I frown slightly, scratch with my nails. A splinter, I’m sure. I close my eyes and pull, groaning slightly from the shooting pains that strike my shoulders as I do. I pull further, the splinter separating from me sorely. Eventually, the end, and as I bring it around to face me, it is not a splinter at all.

 

A small green shoot stands proud in my palm, a stubborn white root trailing from its base. I laugh animatedly like a child. I marvel as I turn it over in my hand, wiping my blood from it as I do. I lean forward and move my soil around attentively, placing my little shoot in its midst. I cover its roots. A piece of me, hugged warm and safe by my loving soil – that which I love so, finally loving me back. 

 

Summer scorches, and I begin to fret once again. 

 

My loves still grow, but they hold a brown crisp at the ends of their petals and leaves, and they frown to me. As I water them, I hear them sigh with some relief. Thanking me. But it is short-lived. I sit with them, my skin burning in the relentless sun, becoming tighter and pleading me for shade, for water, but I barely hear. 

 

My loves suffer, so fragile in their youth. I pray for the nights to come, for the sun to shut its eyes and stop punishing us. I hear them hum sweetly to me as I try to sleep, consoled by a cool night’s breeze. I toss in my bed. My scalded skin throbs, tortured by the prospect of the blistering sun’s return. 

 

One fatal afternoon, when the sun is at its cruellest, I run out of water to provide my loves. My chest tightens as fear sets into my body, strong and brittle. I tense, and feel the earth beneath them. Parched. Stale. But the well too, is dry, and my loves are crying, reaching out to me, their petals imploring me for some respite from their thirst.

 

But I am barren. 

 

I sit with them again, perch on their drained bed of soil, stroke their stems and apologise, over and over, until my throat is raw and scorched. Their only parent has failed them. I begin to weep, the balmy tears settling uncomfortably on my searing cheeks. Chest shuddering, I drop my head over my loves and allow my tears to fall upon their browning petals, hoping to relieve the slightest of their pain. I whisper as I sob into the earth, making anguished promises.

 

I am sorry, my loves. I promise I will be better. I promise, I will be better. 

 

Autumn brings with it a deluge, which I, and my earth embrace with all the grace of a distressed child, longing for the comfort of his mother. 

 

My loves prepare to take their leave from this earth, and I, in turn, attempt to prepare to let them. I spend long hours, wistful, my eyes boring into my dearest soil, reflecting on the months to follow. Empty, unending months. Me, guarding my soil, tending to its needs, even in its darkest, coldest and most desolate days and nights.Worrying over it. Sitting with it during its first frost. Its second frost. Its third. Yearning for my loves to return to me. Pouring myself into it. I wonder whether I will survive another winter, deserted once more. 

 

The rains stop, but the earth is still dampened. Petrichor lingers.

 

The sun hesitates, hanging low in the evening, and it is the last evening I will see us all together. I take off my shoes, and step onto my darling soil. My garden has been kind to me this year, providing me with all that is needed to feel whole, once again. Now, in this moment, I know it is time I must give my whole self back. I remove my clothes, let them fall to the ground, and lower myself to lie with the earth, naked and warm, despite the soil’s cool dampness against my skin. I let my eyelids flutter down, and I breathe with my soil once more. We inhale, and exhale together. I let the evening pass, and the night. I let the years pass. I let my body decay, sinking into my own patch of earth. I let the roots of my loves ensnare my flesh – let my loves grow through me, just as I wished they always would. I am never alone. 

 

I am finally home.