Garden Of The Past

Sometimes things are best left unsaid.

Constant movement means tenuous connections. You hear of things after they have happened. You miss out on important moments. The path is always forward and the way back is usually murky.

So it is a surprise when a thistle of time reaches out to tug at your skirt.

Once, the hold would have been paramount. Unshakeable. Unyielding and finite. The separation was a tearing rip that serrated the soul and broke the spirit. That it was self-inflicted meant a one-sided decision that was fueled by cowardice and immaturity. Physical distance and the initiation into the art of avoidance began.

Letters, calls and tears shook the bastion of conviction but self-preservation prevailed. The beginnings of a restless journey into self discovery blossomed and continues. The understanding that attachments are responsibilities that can either nourish or leech you.

You move on. Occasionally, a torn or two catches you and takes a vicious rip but you heal. So you stop to smell the flowers. You breath in the fresh scent of new grass. You feel the sunshine on your cheeks. The wind massaging through your hair.

And you feel the tug on your skirt. 

Remember me, mouths the thistle. Once I was a bloom in your heart, a full flush of colour in your soul. Remember me?

You cast me aside without another word or sight. So cold like the sharpest frost. So final and so unrelenting. No way for discussion. No path for reconciliation. No warning of dissent.

I had to grow apart because you gave me no choice. I have saplings and roots. Do you? Why was it so hard for you to grow with me that you had to cut a graft in my heart?

I think of you each day and the memory nourishes me even as I grieve. The roots and saplings do not know. Nor would they understand. I cannot imagine cutting them off as you did me. And I will wither and die as surely as I thought I once did if they were taken from me.

But I think of you. Every day. Every minute. I know you shine in the sun and dance freely with the flowers. For although you left without a word, I know your soul was shrivelling for that. I just did not want to see it for it would been meant the end of spring.

Be well, my little flower. Think of me sometimes.

I wish I could say the words. To express how sorry I am to cast such a shadow on a verdant garden. How thankful I am for that time of nurture and tending. How cowardly I was to rip the roots without care for anything but my own freedom to walk with the wind.

I wish I could take back the dews of sorrow shed in the wake. I wish I could be wiser and more careful in my path as I tread to my own destiny. I wish I could say the words it longed to hear. That I have regrets about leaving the garden when I have none as I walk in the forest. I wish I could give that big, strong tree, that used to shelter me, seeds of comfort. 

But sometimes, you know, beyond ego, self-preservation or cowardice, that even a sigh can cause more damage. A newly tended garden deserves the peace of sunshine and gentle rain. Not a shadow from the past. 

Somethings are best left unsaid. Untended. 

Be well, garden of the past.