Honeysuckle Raw

Yesterday Doris stood in a corner of her backyard, glass and cigarette in hand. She swept her free arm in an arc to include the garden hugging the walls of the house, the fresh-mown grass, and the separate garden in the very back of her property. "Look here," she said. "From right here you can see everything." Standing in her own four corners, she was so at peace. Moments before, she and two of my other relatives had been discussing the many medications she's on, counting them out of a sectioned plastic box. They debated whether she should be taking her pain pills more often, in anticipation of the pain rather than as a reaction to it; whether she should take Xanax at night; whether Lipitor is causing her aches.

Three of us– me, Doris, and her daughter R– went to the garden center at Wal-Mart. I mooned over the spilling, dainty cream tea cups of Bougainvillea, but R warned me they were difficult and expensive. In the greenhouse a man was hosing all the flowers and flushed red lilies stood out, tall and slender. I don't remember what Doris and R bought. I realized flowers are as personal as underwear or dreams. I wanted some periwinkle like I used to pick and pluck bare in the summer when I was little, but I guess it's too common for people here to want it very badly. R told me the impatiens New Guinea and pansies wouldn't last through the summer heat, so I bought petunias in deep purple, coral, and white. This weekend I'm going to plant them in the wooden barrel in my yard after I shovel out the weeds and stalks.

When I got home, I set aside the box of flowers on my porch. I noticed the brick-colored pot my sister gave me months ago. It had been full of loose lily bulbs, but I never found the motivation to plant them. I realized that long, stiff green leaves are shooting proudly upward and the pot definitely wasn't like that when she gave it to me. Four cramped lilies have taken it upon themselves to grow. I pulled out some of the mulch on the top layer and dug around in the pot, unable to believe they had really just sprouted without my permission or care. I lifted one out of the pot, saw its bulb frayed and beginning its spidery reaching. In the soil, I saw two dark amber threads of wet earthworms diving away from me, boring back into the cool lattice of roots.