Spring Witchery: A Poem (Out) of Sorts

Everything I plant is dead. Skeletons of springs past, reminders of summers’ full bloom, the fall of a long, cold autumn. Frigid air makes us brittle. We crave, we call out, for the final rest of winter. And then we die. Or we play at death. Pretend to shrivel and dry. Pretend to allow our skins to crust over. 

In the cemetery that was once a garden, I sit still as a plant. The breeze waves my hair but I am still. I once was dead, too. Before I came here. Before I sat on the stone in the middle of what was once my garden. And now I wake in the spring remembering winter, remembering my death, remembering yours. Were you buried too?  

I go to the old shed, the one that’s falling down, windows broken going back to the Earth itself. I open the door and the smell hits me. Dust and decay, old earth, the dirt we came from.  Pots with dry skeletons of rosemary, lavender, a scented geranium that I once loved and coaxed to bloom that year that we were first married. Do you remember?

The standstill, a reminder, a life I never lived. A standoff. A life I wanted to live. Where hope was once, now there are dead stalks and stems. 

I will plant them again. I will water them and put them in the sun. Some will regrow. Lean, wispy green buds will squirm back, brightening the desiccated. Some stay dead. What is dead may never die.

This is the story told by Joy in the season of Death. A story of Secrets when spells of Immortality were cast. Everything I plant is dead? Asking is how you know.