A Garden Grown Wild
This weekend I borrowed a room in which to write. I brought fruit and yogurt, which I placed in the frig. I plugged in a clock. I put a candle on the desk.
I looked around the room and then I went downstairs. I’d smelled jasmine on my way in. I found the vine climbing a tree near the house. I chose carefully, plucking, in the end, three stems of the small, white flowers. I do not take the lone, curling tendril whose backdrop is the smooth, honey-colored bark of the tree.
Looking around, I noticed a bucket filled with seashells and rainwater. I chose an open shell, its interior the color of sunsets at the beach, rinsed then filled it with rainwater. I lay the flower stems into the water and, looking around some more, found a river rock, just the right size, which would hold the stems in place.
Back upstairs, I walked the perimeter of the room, holding the shell and flowers in one hand and with the other, fanning the fragrance of the flowers up to my nose.
I spent the evening at my computer, candle burning to my right, flowers and shell to my left. The desk faces a bank of windows. It is a sign of the lengthening days that it was light until after eight o’clock.
When I leave, early the next morning, the air outside is cool, and smelling of jasmine.
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