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.