The sense of nothing

The entire month of May I was a whisper of a human walking through a wind tunnel. I functioned with enough energy to make my bed, move into the living room and make a new bed on the couch. I stared out the window until I memorized all the individual shades of green that colored our yard. When the sun was out I would shuffle outside and stand in the hottest spot begging whatever was afflicting me to go back into the Earth. Hummingbirds started to come to our garden. Their wings like jet propellers, my fingers reaching toward them like the creation of Adam.
The mourning doves built a nest on a palm branch. The nest fell and the eggs looked like three white gum balls in the grass. I thought we should bury them but then how would their mother find them. I thought about my siblings and how we used to ask my dad for a quarter to get gum out the machine. We left the eggs in the grass. The birds came back to the palm branch. They rebuilt their nest.

The couch molded to my shape by the third week. I imagined vines sprouting out of the cushions, whispering in my ear to never leave. I wondered if the ocean still existed. Something so close to me had never felt so far before. It rained every day of May until the week my mom arrived. The sun performed as if it was its last day in the sky. The ice in our cups melted within minutes. We poured the watered down drinks into the grass, little rivers forming in between the ants. We threw the overripe passion fruit down the hill. The dogs at the bottom started howling, we howled back. The breeze seeping through the windows would catch my mom mid-sentence and wrap her in a calmness. Sleep took her so suddenly that she would wake up and start back in conversation always repeating how, “I’ve never felt wind like that before.”

After my mom left, I began to return to myself. My mom in her own way was able to pull the layers back and put the pieces of me back together in the correct spot. She brought back the feeling of childhood stillness. We laughed and told stories and I felt alive. We drove around to the far reaches of the island and started at the ocean, the sound of the water filling the space as if we had stepped into a sea shell. The three of us started at the water until it seeped into our veins. The salt dripped into our clothes that week and at night we hung up ourselves to dry.

It is still springtime despite the Memorial Day propaganda of summer. This spring the land and sky met and filled each other. There was so much rain that the water couldn’t fill the grass anymore. Puddles and clouds and puddles and clouds and then everything started to bloom. A spray of yellow flowers covered the tree lining like melting butter. When my husband and I water the plants at night, he always tells me to make sure I water the roots. The primary function of the roots is to give water and nutrients to the plant. The roots have to be strong to keep the plant alive. I’m outside in the rain praying for more roots to hold keep me through the summer months.

“May: the lilacs are in bloom. Forget yourself.”

T ❤

you can also find me on IG @unpublishedsun for more writing and rambles.