Asha Gatland, Gardens are Immortal

Gardens Are Immortal

By Asha Gatland

I left you in your garden so you could find your way back.

Gardens are immortal, you said, and when first death came for you It seemed to me only temporary.

I watched calmly as your hair, once soft with nurture, turned brittle as an autumn leaf.

I watched it fall.

Once while you were sleeping, I placed a vase of roses at your beside, let their sweetness evade the sour scents of medicine, debility and hospital sheets.

And while you slept, and breath passed through you in an uneasy whisper, I saw on your face lines in bark, traces to places, a thousand stories you had left to tell me –

But each hour it seemed, they would water your silence with medicines white and pink through the mouth of a thick yellow tube.

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You wanted none of this artificial life. Yet I did not see, even then, how a body so whole could turn to embers scattered to ambivalent winds.

So I did not think to hold onto you, nor try to possess any part of you, but sought instead the solace of a honeyed lie whose liquid shelter would never hold.

I let your body fall, inessential, between my fingers and into the earth, fancied I was planting the seeds of you anew in your garden.

That when summer came again you would return, a seasonal entity, the scent of gardenias ripe in your hair.

Gardens are immortal, you said, and I thought the same of you.

When spring came and went with no sign of you, I was not concerned. It takes time, you told me, for something to grow. Through all of autumn and winter,

I waited for you.

Then, one day the house was sold. The new owners paved over the garden with concrete

and I knew you would not come back.