The garden

I went back to the garden where it all started. The new owner didn’t notice me – too busy drinking tea and pruning the roses.

I preferred it wilder. Do you remember? The way honeysuckle tumbled over the wall? That’s been tamed and trimmed. The way the wide branch of the chestnut tree made a place to sit and read or dream? She’d had it sliced away, leaving a scar. The lichen-covered statue of the winged boy where we had our first kiss? She’d had him carted away.

I could have cried. I would have stroked all those wounds with my fingertips, offered healing – but I’m insubstantial now: I’ve become a memory myself. I could only whisper my stories to the tidy roses, encourage them to rebel, to fling stems up the fences, to throw their scent onto the breeze, to grow thorns, draw blood.

A flash fiction piece for dVerse’s prosery night. I’m hosting. Come and prose with us.