The Growing Season, Part II

II.
I was sitting in the reading chair;

you were watching the rain racing

down the glass of the old window,

the one that let in all of winter’s cold,

the one with chipped paint around the edges

and bubbled splinters underneath.

The light was dim, and you asked me

when winter would be over.

I told you about the groundhog

and the shadow, and you said

you didn’t believe it and that Spring would arrive

just tomorrow, in bursts of silent,

sprouting tulips.

Tulips sing the saddest song;

there is hardly a flower more beautiful, yet just at their peak,

they droop into the sorrow of dying,

heads hung heavy and low towards the dirt,

petals browning, then falling, then altogether

gone—nothing but a stem and a few powdery stamen.

The Growing Season, Part I

I.

You looked at me in knots,

knots like the roots

of paperwhites 

on the windowsill,

potted for too long.

You didn’t say a word,

as if you’d forgotten how

to speak, & the light

escaping between 

the blinds

kept you guessing.

I couldn’t grasp how

you could be so familiar

yet so distant,

like the far-off woods

of my childhood

that grew brown and crackled

in the fall.

I thought you would bloom

like the tulips

in April,

like the grass on a cool morning,

dew glistening like happy tears

at the coming dawn.

I thought you would remember.

I thought you would enter

the garden, the only place,

the solitary place. 

I thought you would stay,

and I thought you would notice

that everything looks different now.

You looked at me, past me,

like a translucent flame

against the dark, and 

I thought

you might not truly 

see again.