BOTANICA
11.14.20
Joshua Tree – Yucca brevifolia
“One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. “You’d be destroying what makes it special,” she said. “It’s the Joshua tree’s struggle that gives it its beauty.”
J.W – The Glass Castle
They pick-pocket each other’s knowing looks with full intention of returning what is shared.
In this place, brevity becomes.
That side-eye glance that tracks back heritage from Umbilical Chord to the Pleiades.
You? You fly-on-the-wall in desert bedrock. Watch the spaces between familial lines and kneaded out avoidance.
Take that in. Take it all in. By either social fopaux or dumb luck you slipped in the cracks of some cellophane looking glass. Maybe that’s all there is here.
The way they set the dinner table with meals for one and yet, share a bite. All characters are present; The Hiker Trash, The Empath, The Dim Genius, The Mad Hater; all stitched together with paternity glue. All threaded to bits by wanting to do just a little better, feel a little more, avoid a little less pain.
“I wanted to let the world know that no one had a perfect life, that even the people who seemed to have it all had their secrets.”
J.W – The Glass Castle
You? You sit, you listen, you gather your thanks for all the hugs and kisses, all the kind words, and the unkind ones too. All the years of molding your own version of “a little better.” That’s the spoon you were fed with. These lessons you swallow are mirror to the ones they’ve learned. There’s no telling if our legs would have carried us were we wearing each other’s shoes.
Sometimes it’s just better to face the boulder barefoot.
What would they think of me anyway… “I make my bed every day.” I tell them.
I have a bed. I omit.
These characters would frown at the likes of us. Us who packed these bags by need, rather than choice. Us who’s bedrock was be bed before it was therapy, us who made routine from making carrying home on your shoulders, making the whiskey warm the body, feeling too comfortable in discomfort.
“I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.”
J.W The Glass Castle