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All is damp in the garden. Small prisms of light dance across the atrium as the sun filters through. I breathe deeply to taste the deep of soil and the fragrance all around.
A voice calls gently from somewhere behind me, one of the tour guides here, and asks if I've been to the botanical garden before. I lie and say yes and he nods and leaves me. Again, I'm alone. I find my way between the overhanging monstera leaves, the butterfly bushes, the grasses organized in rows of color, to find the pink snapdragons hidden in the corner. Bees flicker around them. I reach down to touch the tall stalks and to observe the imaginary faces present in their clustered petals. It would be good, I think, to keep pruning shears in my pocket to steal flowers from gardens.
I enter the next room, this one an open-air portico, and find a great sundial in the center. I move towards it to read the shadow of the gnomon. Almost 4:00 pm; the sun glows bright in my eyes and I lower my head to avoid it.
Beneath the citrus notes of the flowers and the must of the earth, like Roethke's root cellar, there is the oceanic salt of you. I'm drawn back five years to the dark shelter of dressing rooms and the Starship and within both of those spaces, Tower House with its heavy wooden doors and four poster bed.
I seek out your scent and find you beneath hanging ferns, watching me.
You raise your hand, which holds the tour guide's pamphlet, and cross from the doorway to the arches. I cannot see your eyes beneath your sunglasses, but I notice the hanging button-up you wear, how the sleeves drape from your arms and how your cheeks have lost their angelic fullness. I reach for the sundial and try to not drop to my knees and hug your legs against my cheek, to cry for you and the lack of you and of all and of everything gone in five years.
"You look as if you live here in the garden," you say. You smile without teeth. "Lilac was always a gorgeous color on you."
"Thank you. I'm only visiting." My eyes wander the foliage around us and return to you. Jimmy, it's been a very long time."
You seem to sigh into your body. "It has, hasn't it? You look well."
I take the compliment and only nod. I'm unable to return it. The way your shoulders droop, you are aware of yourself beside me, aware of how I know that you have changed in the bad way.
Without any other thoughts, I wrap myself around you in a hug. You return it and there is all warmth: a fresh breath of spring.
When we part from our hug, you remove your sunglasses. Your dark eyes, squinched with wrinkles, bare the sun and my face before you. My full name, with no shortened version or endearment, leaves your mouth.
Somehow, as you've always done, you read my mind. "I've missed you too," you whisper, nearly imperceptible.
The confession hovers inside of me. You are here with me, I realize. After so long. You're here with me again.
You don't allow me time to rationalize, instead, you ask, "What have you been doing?"
Nothing, I want to say, but I hold my words and smile, "Working in a bookstore, organizing the shelves. I don't even have to work the register."
"You never much liked talking to people. Except me, of course."
The reality lingers and electrifies my skin. "Except you. . ." The sunlight illuminates you, bronzing your dark hair and shining you with a golden, honey tone. "What are you doing here?" In truth, I want to know why you're in my hometown and why you didn't call beforehand.
"Just enjoying nature. Let's sit down; I forgot how awful hot it is here," and you guide me to a metal bench just inside one archway. I can see, even more, how thin you've gotten. Your thighs no longer have the delicate litheness I once knew. Now, they disappear in the heaviness of your slacks.
"Did you come here for me?" I ask outright.
You hum low. "Maybe. I'm at a point of going where ever. Things are . . . unraveling."
I've heard how difficult it's been from the newspapers and your friends who have kept up with me. All has left me with the deep maternal feeling to return to you, to heal you, to hold you in my arms and cradle you.
"It's hard these days," I agree and add, with a little fear, "sometimes it's hard without you."
Something lingers on you. I can see the words aching to spill from your mouth, but you withhold and only nod at me in a way of understanding. "It's hot here," you say again. "Maybe I can take you out for a dinner. Are you hungry?"
"No," I tell you and you decide on a visit to an ice cream shop, as if I'm a child deserving a reward.
Still, you can't drive, so we take my car. It's like how it was before -- me driving you around as you rest your head against the window. And in the five years that my car has not known you, it knows you again. The small lavender sprig, now brown and wearied, rests in the mirror of the passenger seat's sun visor. So many pieces of you, held within like tiny presents, coming undone. I think about taking you to a bus stop and dropping you off; I'd be able to run away without burden.
We drive on and on and it feels as if I'm caught with you in this space in the car moving through the angled city streets. I could keep you here, as I always wanted, and all would be good.
