Into the Green

Light at summer's end

Rife with imperfect beauty

Goes into the green.

Night Depository

Asha creeps down alleys and lanes, eyes downcast and pockets empty. The only thing she carries is a folded slip of paper tucked into her palm. Her fingers are ink-stained; she believes the magic will only work when the letters are penned in the deepest purple she can find and the paper has been hand-made from her own secret combination of pulp and ephemera.

Her pockets are empty because she knows the night streets are dangerous. If confronted, she will have nothing of worth to give, and Asha recognizes that this, in itself, is almost as dangerous as traveling around with a fat wallet and a neck hung with bling. What she doesn’t know is that she shines anyway, with an elusive glow obvious only to those familiar with the characteristics of hope.

Sometimes the letters that Asha delivers are relevant to her own needs and desires, but they are just as likely to contain the wishes of others, garnered from long telephone conversations with friends, bits she’s observed on the internet, or snippets overheard on street corners. Her writing is almost illegible, a tightly cramped scrawl filled with loops and curves that bend into shapes resembling ancient symbols whose meaning has long been lost, faded into obscure history texts or books on alchemy.

She approaches the cross streets and pauses. There is rarely anyone else in the area at this time of the evening but she wants to be sure. She quickly scurries forward, pulls down the lever on the night depository and stashes her letter inside. She checks to make sure it is secure in the metal box, but she doesn’t linger.

On her walk home, Asha imagines what the morning tellers make of the pages she leaves there. Do they laugh, she wonders, or do they covertly add their own wishes to the list?  She hopes that what she’s doing isn’t some sort of federal offense. Upon her return, Asha’s boyfriend gives her an indulgent smile and goes to put the kettle on. He is used to her nocturnal outings and knows he cannot stop them.

Back at the bank, another figure emerges from the shadows. The woman is slim, dressed in tight jeans and a black tank top. Her cheeks are round, but she wears a much different face than the one usually portrayed by painters or prophets. Anyone mistaking her for human would know otherwise if they were there to see her reach into the depository and retrieve the slip of paper from the impossibly small chute.

The Moon Goddess cups the letter in her hands and murmurs a brief chant. When she opens her palms, the page has crumbled into thousands of tiny pieces. A light breeze emanates from her fingertips and, for miles around, people smile in their sleep, dream-fed. The Moon Goddess lifts her hands towards the sky and watches as the shredded bits drift silently upward. “There you are, my children.”

The stars hungrily devour their meal and the night echoes with their thanks.

Beauty's Garden

* Changing things up a bit this time around... Instead of using one of my own photos for this post, I am fiction-riffing in response to a painting called "The Turret Stairs" by Frederic Burton, as a part of a book giveaway challenge over at "The Merry Sisters of Fate." * 

~ Beauty’s Garden ~

Is it the scent of lavender

That enchants you so, dear prince?

Eyes bright after your briar bashing

Success in the labyrinth of thorns and now,

Yes now you've finally met

The girl with poisoned-apple colored lips.

Does the rosemary help you remember?

Strains of first true love,

Long forgotten songs,

The sea and stars vying for your attention

In a night of wonder when you first

Put your foot upon this road…

Or is it the thyme, sweet thyme,

That hints upon the magic

In this place full of possibilities where

Blissful flora and a beautiful face

Seduce your senses, fuels

The shape of your desire...

The roses charmed you, no doubt,

Soft as sleeping skin, daisy chains and

Pale breast blushing invitations

Of young love pure and

Intoxicating eternal bliss that’s

Yours for the taking. So.

You stand surrounded by Eden’s splendor

Finer than your wildest dreams,

The crushed scent of fragile orchids and

The pleasure jasmine’s promised plunder;

Both girl and garden. Enough

Beauty to fill a thousand lifetimes. But oh,

Dear Prince, beware the foxglove.

At the Center of the Garden

There is a ghost who lives at the center of the garden. In the heat-haze shimmer of a summer afternoon, I can almost see the face of the man he once was, busy with spade and shovel, planting bloom and blossom, carefully carving out the flagstone path that leads to the whimsical shelter quietly nestled in the depths of green. It isn’t hard to imagine its former glory and, dozing with eyes half shut, I listen…

It is here that the wind whispers his tale to me, that stories spill out on rays of sun and spin lazily on dust motes to bee-drone melodies. Sometimes the long grasses rustle their own version, or the cicadas add an aside. This is what I am told…

It is here that he seduced his love with flowers, pressed roses into her gentle hands, wreathed her hair in violets, covered her face with jasmine-scented kisses so fiery that even the lilies blushed. He crushed herbs between his fingers and caressed her cheek with promises of remembrance. This is what he remembered…

Late-night lovemaking. Picnics with his children. His daughter’s graduation and his son’s wedding. Dancing in the moonlight on his fiftieth anniversary, wondering at the quickness of time. Twilight smiles.  Cutting flowers for his wife’s grave. Long stretches spent silently dreaming of the day he would see her again. His eyes closing and then…

It is here, at the center of the garden, tucked among the overgrowth, surrounded by scattered memories and conversing with ghosts, that I am reminded of the fact that nature always takes back her own. It is here, where the scent of passion lingers and the pollen is thick with secrets, that I also realize something else. This is what I know: even in death, love prevails. 

Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit