Wednesday

Her garden runs in lines and circles. I’m eating cold bacon with my fingers and watching her work. The bacon, cooked three hours earlier is in a bowl on the table by the window. I’m eating it and watching her. She’s walking the path along the grass around the hedges and flowers and things I can’t name, she’s picking things. She’s pulling stuff off. She’s admiring everything, she’s running her hands around plants like a mom fixing her kids hair. She’s wearing that same sundress from the photo, with the thin straps that run over her shoulders - the waist is very tight. Her hair looks freshly fucked, and full of waves. She doesn’t know I’m watching, but she probably does. Her house smells like old wood and bacon. I can also smell the eggs that she cooked and ate before I woke up. I’m standing here, eating her bacon and smelling her house. I’m watching her work. She looks like a garden to me all the time. Sometimes she stops to check on things when we go on walks. We saw a dying or almost dead bee in the middle of the sidewalk, she stopped to push it onto a leaf. She put him on the grass. She does this all the time, the same way animals do stuff all the time because they have to. She rescues, she feeds, she takes care of everyone. She tried to save a baby bird. He didn’t survive, but she named him Motrin and buried him in the garden. We painted a large “M” in black house paint on a rock. She say’s she does this because she’s a virgo, because she’s a girl. But that’s barely it. She has more in her hands than other people. She has a way with her hands more than anyone else I’ve met. The way she picks things up is gentle, the way she touches the side of my face is soft. I keep my eyes open when we kiss because I need to. All I can see is the side of her cheek, right eye, the lines of her neck and hair.

This bacon is cold but nourishing - I’m coming back to life. For the past forty-eight hours I was sweating in her bed with a high fever. She just lay next to me, breathing in my sick. I apologized too much, she said she didn’t care. My eyes were rolling back, she played with my hair and soothed me. She was tired but stayed up, kept watch over me until finally my fever started to break and she brought me fresh water with a metal straw.

“You take care of everyone else, let me take care of you.” She said.

Two days later, I feel weird but good. I’m standing in here looking at you thru the large window in your kitchen. The clock on the wall says 11:11. You stopped now, still holding the basket with your left hand blocking the sun from your eyes with your right. You’re looking at me in the window. Ten or eleven bubbles form and pop behind my ribs. I’m watching you walk back to the house with my heart in your mouth. The day starts now.