gardening

I wrote this when I was in year 12. it was a letter to someone and it still really means a lot to me. so, Tumblr, this is what I write when I’m not worried about form or characters or plots or themes. this is what I write when I’m feeling.

We would pack a bag, just one bag, and we would throw it in the back of the car and leave. Leave everything. Everyone. Ever. All the ones that gave us grief and made us forget what it was like to live and feel and think and dream and exist outside of our shells. They’d fade away into the silver dust, along with all the doubt and the safety and the limits and the expectations and the boredom. The stuff that comes along with living someone else’s life.

With just a china piggy bank covered in flowers, we’d finally see through the frosted glass that had held us back for so long. We would drive and drive and drive and drive and only you would do the driving because I am not old (nor responsible) enough to control such a weapon. The only weapons I have are my words and they are more destructive than fifty million car crashes.

We would leave a note for the ones we don’t want to hurt.
Yours will say ‘thankyou for being there for me and making me comfortable and safe and letting me see that it’s not what I needed’

Mine will say ‘you could not have done a better job with me, I will be off your hands for a while so you can do what you have always wanted and I will come back to check and make sure you are doing it’

Sometimes we would forget that we are human and that we should have stopped at that last town and stayed in a little b & b for the night and got up late the next morning to a breakfast of raisin toast and black tea and laid around in the garden and made pictures out of the clouds and watched as it rained and not cared that it soaked our clothes and our hair, but we would keep driving until our (your, my) eyes grew heavy and we would have to pull over somewhere safe and sleep in the car but it didn’t matter because you are me and I am you and we are okay.

Our fairytale is real even if it exists in the silence, we can feel the imagination and the freedom and the magic in the air as we sip on our coffees and sit on the dock overlooking the still lake with a small boat bobbing along the mirror a few hundred metres away. You would swing your feet off its edge while I looked down into the water and we would talk about aquatic life and come up with interesting facts about strange creatures and wonder what it’s like to be one of them and then we’d create our own sea-dwelling crustacean with fangs and claws and tentacles and twenty seven legs. I would take off my shoes and tell you to close your eyes and you would and for that moment everything disappeared and appeared at the same time because you didn’t know what to think but you felt the universe and then you would hear me run and fall into nothingness for a moment that stretched a lifetime but the splash of the lake that wet your feet would jolt your heart and make your soul shine. And I would comment on the temperature of the water and ask you to join yet you would refuse to follow me but I know you would secretly want to so I’d climb up the rusty ladder and you would back away but I would advance and you would threaten to desert me on the dock and drive off into the hills but I would grin because I knew you were kidding and I would steer you to the edge and if I was anyone else you would stop me but I’d push you off and fall in after you. And then you would try to scare me (and succeed) by pretending you drowned and bobbing lifeless in the water and I would think you were joking but I’d poke you and freak out because you weren’t moving but then you’d surface and squirt water at me and I would love you but not have to like you for a few minutes. You would say that’s okay though and we’d climb into a little boat and drift out over the water with the warmth of the sun drying our clothes and our hair and we would just lay there with the soft rocking made by the waves reminding us of our childhood and we’d be in our comfy silence and exist forever because we knew that we found a fairytale.

We will probably go somewhere little where no one knows us and we look like aliens but it’s okay because we know who we are and we would make friends with the wrinkly man who owns the antique shop and we’d ask if we could help him sort and clean some of his things and so he’d leave us with history while he pursued his fifty thousand year old love interest at a coffee shop (after some polite encouragement from both of us because we know what it’s like to be kept away) and we’d lock the door and the room would come alive. We would probably talk about everything there is to talk about from one wall of the shop to the other as we sifted through books and dusted off clocks and statues and telescopes and precious nothings that were something to someone once upon a time, and we’d unfold an enormous old map and cough from the dust but when it settled, we would forget time and space and become explorers and pretend we are conquering the world because we are. You would probably want to be the rich, clean master of the ship called “THE IBI” and you would sit in your glowing cabin or steer the giant wheel with the tip of your finger as I sat in the water tower and looked out into the universe and hoped we wouldn’t fall off the edge. We wouldn’t find countries or continents or lost cities but it wouldn’t matter if we fell because we already found us and that’s that.

The old man would return with his love on his arm and we would have to leave but we’d feel good knowing we made his life a little bit brighter during our time of magical infinity.

We would go and go and go and not stop until we were both too exhausted to speak but it was okay because the silence speaks louder and with that mischievous look we would buy tickets to France and we would fly (while pretending we are birds) and get lost in the madness. But we wouldn’t need a job because we already had money (somehow) and so we’d rent out a flat that overlooked a plaza with a fountain that kids ran around, held back by their mothers and their laws and their expectation. But wanting them to be me, I would run outside and into the fountain to show them what it’s like to live and you would welcome me back with a towel and a cup of tea and a croissant and we would sit on the balcony and watch the world go by, knowing that we conquered it just like we knew we did when we sat on the stairs next to the pond that day and got lost in the life of the ducks.

A time would pass and we’d suck the life out of the apartment with its decorated ceiling and fly-netted king bed with ten pillows and ornate parquet floorboards and so we’d decide to pack a bag and run away again. We’d find a big map of Europe and I’d close my eyes and spin around and wherever my finger landed is where we would go and so because all ten of my fingers landed in different places, we would go everywhere but you wouldn’t mind because there’s no such thing as boredom anymore.

So we’d turn into water and wash across the country, doing anything and everything and nothing all at the same time but loving it because it’s us and we’d never done anything quite like this before. We would probably get home sick from time to time but it wasn’t really homesickness, it was more of a missing the protection and love of lots of little people who did things for us and made us safe but it was okay because one look at each other and we knew we were home.

And then did you know that I have not forgotten our tattoos, we will find a (preferably clean) parlour and tell them what we want and laugh at each other’s painful faces as we each got our hearts painted on our skin, my birds and your elephants and then because we were brave we’d think of something that would bind us and it would look strange to everyone else but we knew that we were always with each other right from the start. From the veeeeery start where you read the story and melted a little bit inside and we knew it was there when we stared into each other and talked about your stubbornness about chemical reactions in the brain and my retaliation that it takes away the magic and I think that is what I am making you see now – magic and dizziness and light. And how I would always wait around afterwards but you wouldn’t mind because I am sunshine and you lacked a bit of vitamin D and so you were cautious but you let it go when you got on the roller coaster and I know you are afraid because you don’t want to hurt anybody but the only person you will ever hurt is yourself.