the bush

It's that dang bush again, right there in the middle of my garden. Someone tells me its' name, Valeria. 'It' becomes 'her'. Those shoots, tiny green stems above ground that lead me to thick underground snarls of spreading root systems, are just her nature. She's reaching out, trying to get more life. She's only defending her existence. And I can't deny that natural urge or poo poo the fear behind it. The garden teaches me, again. Here is a thing which doesn't act the way I think that it should. I'd like to "fix" it: hack and carve it back into something more shrub-like that I can understand. I can't hold this bush in my heart if it's looking a little too "natural". But Valeria and I will simply fight each other all summer if I choose to do this.

Help me help you. I will carve you back on this side, by the walk where people pass by. I will trim out your shoots and roots and cover the area with mulch, fancy grass and day lily. As a trade you can expand freely toward the center of the bed, where there is lots of open space. I will not tear you up there. I promise to not yank at a single shoot and you may grow on your north side with reckless abandon.

As I come closer to the walk-side shoots with my sharp, new tool, I see why. I see why she shoots out in all directions. Bent down, underneath the conceit of foliage and flower, I see the source of her fear. In the center of the bush, she's dead. I pull out the husks of former life in hopes that this will allow in more light. Maybe she will breathe a little easier. Maybe she will let up on spreading to heal her center for a month or two.

In my pocket the phone goes off. It's someone I haven't spoken to in over 9.5 years. It was a horrid, angry parting, but here we chat like the friends we started out as. Really, we're neither of us the people that we were. Our cells have swapped over at least once, building us whole new physical bodies. We sort through our flimsy consciousness to tack down what we knew and reference it forward to the present day. What has changed? Where are people? You're doing WHAT??? Some things are the same. He's still stubborn. I still wear the same glasses.

I have to wonder, who is the person he remembers? Does he recognize any vestige of her in me? Because I have only the slimmest recognition of him. It's like a conversation between friendly strangers who each happen to possess an abnormal degree reference to the other's back story.