Untethered

The sky outside is grey and overcast, a duvet thrown over London to keep me swaddled in comfort. The air has a gentle breeze playing through my newly shorn hair and my chest aches with the heavy weight of loneliness.

As I watch the dandelions bravely growing unfettered in my back garden, guilt rifles through my arteries to pinch and prod at my lack of movement. Our neighbors have beautiful roses blooming in every color and hyacinths bleeding for the love of a sun they’ve never known, but my garden teems with weeds and forget me nots. Small birds whose name I’ve never asked fly down and peck at the white fluff of the flowers, heedless of cat who lives next door. The idea that the seeds I blew wishes on so recently also serve to give flight to these small creatures is a revelation I hadn’t expected from my quiet kitchen.

My parents’ garden won’t have any of these flowers right now. My dad was visiting and its his pride to keep the lawn neat in a way he never managed to pass down to me. I haven’t asked if he spent a few hours with the lawnmower making sweeping concentric circles around our yard, up and down the small hills and deftly avoiding the bushes that creep ever more into his territory with each passing year. I don’t need to ask. The sun shone and he was there, and he loves my mother who has as little interest in grass as I do.

I haven’t asked if my mother’s lavender bush has begun to bloom yet. I know it has. As the hot Virginia sun stares coldly at the dim light in my English garden, I know that those small blooms have begun to perfume the air and provide shade for our old lady cat, whose face is going grey while her fur remains so soft. I know the sun is baking the plants in an overbearing love and I know my mother fills two empty old orange juice jugs with tap water every three days, loving those plants with all the care that comes from consistency. My mint plant hasn’t sprung a new leaf in weeks.

I don’t know if my favorite watering hole at home has put out giant hanging planters yet. That is a detail that never stays the same, year to year, dawn to dusk. I do know that no one has bothered to dust the attic’s haul of clutter that hangs precariously from the ceiling, a health hazard that lends extra protein to everyone’s drinks if the music thumps too loudly. I know the interior will be dark and damp and I know the names of the people who can’t stay away. I don’t need to ask if they miss me. I don’t want to know the answer.

When old friends meet to play games and drink together on a Thursday night, people whose smiles I crave and whose care I long for, do they ever stop to remember me? I know one does, I don’t trust the rest not to lie. My bones remember the way they snapped under the weight of wanting to love a genuine person and how sharp the stones of the ground felt to realize I would never be enough to stick in their mind, rather more akin to the grit of sleep clinging to an eyelash.

Would I be less of a coward if I asked the new friends from old places what they thought of me? When the thought of asking for a solid answer on which to build a home between us leaves my skin turned cold and my heart skittering to a stop I know I don’t need the answer.

Which would be worse, I ask myself in the dead of night, staring at the streetlamp beyond my curtains that hangs like a second moon. Would it be worse to tentatively reach forward and ask someone if we’re friends and how and have the answer be the bland pleasantries of a boat passing across the inconstant waves or if they held my face in theirs and spoke deeply of the care and love they had for me when I know as they don’t that there is no way for them to know me so well as for any of their words to be true.

I turn away from the eye of night and towards the fathomless dark of sleep. I try to fold myself in on myself and kindle things I know to be true into a small fire to warm myself in my empty bed.

It does not matter if I know someone is lying with their own ignorance. If what they believe to be true is kind, then that kindness is a gift to be treasured. If my fear is to be known and rejected for the small shriveled thing that is my heart then that is a fear to be guarded against on a different day. For now my arms are open and their love is free, I should be so lucky to be loved in the bright false light of an old city or under the ancient stars of a new one.

The wind is constant and I can see a rosebud peeking over my neighbor’s fence. There are no birds in my garden today. But somewhere the cut grass smells sweet and the memory of what it means to be cared for fills the ache in my chest.

My coffee is done brewing, and I am still alone.