It could be the only home in all eternity; a refuge from a karmic cesspool; it could be the beginning of the end, as are the bubbles of delusion. The consoler could have been the captor.
Today was the day.
I took a large machette down from its hook, in the shed - were we planning a jungle, next? I paused to admit you had always been full of surprises - and I set off into the desloation.
Though, that was the whole thing: it was hardly desolate, anymore. It was starting to fill out, fast. Why this speed? Suddenly, sprouting everywhere. Roads to take out into the distance. Mounds to reach and mark with posts. Corrals to fence: had we thought of horses? With that condor a whole new world had flown in.
The cherry orchard, we had decided this spring was on my right; the vineyard staggered up into the lilac and apricot hills stetching east. After you had painted the sea in the west, for my birthday, we had put up dunes with the idea of getting a dog.
But I missed the days on the bench under the pear tree, the simple pain, the ceasless agony. The green bodice that held me up; the winged sleeves that lent me grace. I remember we took forever finding the dress I was able to envision myself in.
When did it change? All at once, there was a pond. It had no fish, but its waters were living. Now we have some carp. How many will fit in? But I think it was that afternoon I fell off the ledge that first shook my trust. Maybe a decade ago, already. Does it take that long to find the strength to wake up?
I bend down to rub the roundish obsidian rock polished like a mirror, yet it never gets too hot to drape myself over it; languid like a cat recharging in your optimism. We had my time. It was all we had, but it was also all we needed. Everything on your side depended on this time, which I took so long to appreciate. Once I did, this mini-menhir touchstone for the cosmos of genesis and regeneration appeared. It felt like we were breaking ground, finally. We'd reach the adjacent valley, one day. There had to be one. Or so we both let the other believe to their heart's content.
What more did you really know, all along?
We both were joking when we considered making this our place of worship. Maybe, I meant a church where we might marry. Now, I doubt we could ever have built anything, let alone a temple. You aren’t an architect; you aren't a gardner; our plants came from my garden. Why have I never seen the stars from this spot?
Wasn’t it you who told me to go ahead and discover how high high was from up here? I stepped up onto the ledge and meant to walk out into the desert. You said if were our truth, I could walk in the second dimension. Then I fell, tumbling, tumbling...- not: to fall like Thumbelina off a bookstand onto the table. The brevity of the fall, the depth of it barely an inch, shook me more than a leap from a burning tower could, struck by lightning, chased by the devil himself.
I miss the the days that were appropriately miserable – looking back on it. Huddled in the shadows dancing on the walls of your study, by a blazing fire, in the longest winters. Taking the air bravely in the strongest summers. I could’t even manage a walk from the bench to the tree. I don’t think I ever hugged it. Look at me now! Striding through the sienna sand and kicking up the umber dust. Those days were full of promise, of healing, and youth, I suppose. Expanding within this valley is treacherous, like a terminal illness. Soon every corner will be filled, and the expanse gone.
Did you see it coming? Do you know what I am about to do? You cannot deny, it was harder than before, this summer, to believe in the consolation of tuber-roses, delphiniums, holly-hocks, peppermint and rosemary scenting the balmy summer. I tried to animate myself for sunflower competitions, trailing sweet-peas up a trellis, potato, bean and tomato harvests – when had we ever eaten a meal together?
My gardener friend, my invisible hope, I thank you for everything, but today is the day.
I thought I might not be sad but my eyes have misted over. Here the mountain range ends. Noone passed over them, we cannot pass over them. There was that condor, true. But there was also that lion upon our rock that morning you felt frivolous. No sooner had I started to run to meet it, bonny and blythe, to ask it where it had come from, than you regretted your magic.
“It’s real!” you hollored after me, warning me that it would attack. I looked over my shoulder, confused, seeking your help. “We have to go and investigate,” I tried to make sense, urging you to accompany me, then, if it was so dangerous.
So the ferocious feline was part of the view. True enough, as I approached, it vanished; it's real growl that cannot be heard in our thin air was the very danger you wanted to heed me of.
Come to think of it, you never did leave the confines of the fortress much, did you? You let me go out to play, but you always told me to stay close to your castle. If you appeared it was to call me in, and you were already there. It was a view we were creating, not so much a garden full of playthings, you cannot touch or see or hear like I would be able to.
I had become very adventurous lately, hadn’t I? And you ever more reserved. As if we knew this day would be inevitable and come sooner rather than later.
I know you won’t like what I am planning to do. It’s self-destructive, but I always told you I was unlikely to remedy that flaw in me, this round, in these circumstances. I won’t top myself, that’s the deal we have. I’ll sit it out. I got the mat. I do the time. All this was to give me hope. When I was too weak to sit up in it by myself.
I raise the blade, poised for an instance, mid air. It glints in the sun, that you keep shining night or day, to welcome me. Grateful, but determined, I pause to hear the decision ring true – and then, I slice through the canvas like butter.
The fabric peels apart, revealing a concrete wall of the type that is penitentiary thick. What would it be, a metre? More? Reinforced with steel? I am about to be sucked into the rent and swirled down through the eternal darkness, and spat out to smack onto an ice cold cell floor, when a sharp flash off the metal implement in my hand draws my attention back to the shed.
I hadn’t known we had one. You never built anything. You aren't an architect. Had it come with the fortress? Had you used tools to plant our vines, dig out the pond, cut the tarpaulin, saw the paving, cement the wall around our monastic garden? Do you also wash the windows? Hoover the rug by the fireplace in your study?
The machette is hefty; it's handle sweaty. The sea air brine. My tears hot and heavy with betrayal.
“That’s the extent of despondency,” your whisper reaches me. Your hand upon mine to loosen its grasp around the knife.
You lightly stroke the veil back into place. The slash is gone and the canyon renews its receding horizon.
I cannot see clearly through the blurr of my sobs, but sense the wilderness stretches on farther than I had hoped.
That was all this had been: too small a measure of hope.
You put an arm around my shoulders, turn me around and lead me back to our fortress, promising chamomile tea, we grew last summer, in our garden, within the walls.
