some forgotten witness

It's so hot here that rather than brown leaves in the autumn we contend with brown grass in the summer. All through August, there was a burn ban in my zip code. Shriveled and desperate my plants clung to the notion of living with what little life was left in them. I silently cheered them on, gave them food and water and shade and told them we’d get through this, even as heat curled the last leaves of all I cultivated into dust.

Unable to bear witness to growth, I became fascinated with decay. Watching the process from beginning to end and as I watched I internalized the notion that it was only natural things would come to this. Brute fact and all that.

As I myself fell victim to decay I found that I also clung to life. I went out and watered the earth even as the heat became more than enough to nullify any effort I put in at salvation. From the spout I would spew false hope to my garden that we’d all make it out alive. Like the pilot of a plane telling the passengers it'll be alright, even as the altitude drops.

The words above were written in another season, then left there to sit in hibernation, away from the heat in the dark of some dresser drawer. It has rained since then, and we have had days where the sun, obscured by clouds, was prevented from scorching the world for awhile.

It’s fall now, or at least as much of fall as if can be in Texas. The grass is beginning to grow back and the brown patches that once cratered my neighborhood are turning a light shade of yellow-green. It’s life. Tentative and uncertain, but unfolding nonetheless. It’s only natural that life would reemerge, shedding the losses of the past. Brute fact and all that.

Still, I mourn. I mourn all that I lost in the flames of August. I mourn as I stare at the empty flowerbeds where, only earlier this year, I had planted the promises of something beautiful. I mourn the fact that there was beauty for a time. Perhaps it is my fault for believing that would mean there would be beauty for all time.

All my garden dead, all those hours of toil turned to dust. Atop the shallow graves of my plants grow mushrooms. Brought about by the recent bouts of rain, they’ve emerged all over the yard. So many different types, each more beautiful than the next.

But I don’t grow attached to them. I’ve learned since August. The rain will stop eventually, and they will disappear into the same oblivion that birthed them. In my losing I’ve learned that everything’s lost eventually. Better to let it go now so it can’t hurt later.

I’ll find what pleasure I can in these cooler months but will keep a cool detachment as I do. Only a matter of time until it’s all washed away again. This is a quirk in the tendency toward dis-integration is all it is, these hopeful weeks between the last heat wave and first frost.

[the frigid earth will be barren. nothing planted in the season prior, nothing to lose when the cold swallows up the world. my heart is sheathed in ice like the angel that rests at the center of hell. there is no life, but neither is there that rotting ache for something living. it is simply empty suspension.]

[maybe, come spring, my heart will thaw, and i will learn to grow again. resuming the dance again, tending to something beautiful as if it will be beautiful forever. forgetting decay, for a time at least.]