Hunched under the solemn summer sun

And gentle, toying gusts

I assist the pollinators, plucking,

Wavering seed pods that rest in intertwining pools

Of lush, shimmering green

Flipping them into the stream of breeze

That tickles my hair against my clenched jaw

Fingers releasing prickled stems,

Counting off

I’ll be okay, I won’t. I’ll be okay, I won’t.

This is my chosen alternative

I won’t allow myself to gamble on if they love me or not

It’s not my right to know.

They’re happy, all smiles under the star of her matching one

I gave up my chance, as carelessly as the seeds I send flying

Now my mind stays stuck like the rocks

That lay encased in sun-baked river mud around me

Refusing to move on like I once thought I had

Still, my surroundings continue

Just as their carefully written script delegates

The backdrop for a serenely sweet love story

That I opted out of

When Canadians die, they are

Peacefully shlurped

Into the aether...

Becoming Canada Dry

(I'm not sorry for this absolute frivolity)

Oh, lovely overtaker

You make me feel as if I’m buried

In my own tumbling thoughts

Yet within your gentle, gaslighting embrace

I feel as if I’m crazy to be feeling this way

As layers upon layers of varying worries

Piling upon my head like eternal

Sedimentary rock

The slipping rabbit hole of thoughts

Gapes before me

Smelling of sickly sweet roses

And stale, repeating ideas

Empty and wet

Like a horrid shell of an

Other-Mother, akin to

The desaturated and rotten smell of

A calming rainy evening

But no, you’re here to stay

The newlywed bliss of

Unholy matrimony

Hanging in the air like the acid aura of

Tacky nail polish, practically asking

For mistakes to be made

Then pouncing, viciously attacking

Any errors that may arise

And though to err is human

You convince me otherwise

It’s a cycle of panic and the following regret

Of sharp smells and sour air

Then the peaceful rainy evenings and

Lavender essences you make me resort to

They’re rare relics from the joyous eras

When you leave me be

But more often than not, you hold me close

Letting me know you’ll never leave

Whispering through the calming tactics

You always make me reek of

Oh, lovely overtaker

Who promises to never leave me

While I wish I had the ability to separate myself from the whirl of activity in my brain, I can't. Trying to wind down only leads to winding rabbit holes of stored memories and worry, trapped in a burrow but not shielded in the least. Causing nervously tapping fingertips, and knuckles being popped like dollar store firecrackers on the Fourth of July. It's as if a frantic movie is playing, overlapped by an old State Farm commercial and the day's droning lesson from school on replay. Darting down darkening tunnels of thoughts, from one to the next, toppling like dominoes.

Things don't have to be rational, they never are, and "stop worrying" is a sorry excuse for helpful advice. But in the evenings tinged with the smell of tulips through open windows and the sweet scent of a flower candle, things slow down. And though they aren't quiet, there are trains passing somewhere in the distance and sirens echoing through the city blocks, the evenings provide a little peace. When everything goes to sleep, my winding, whirling thoughts can settle into a still layer of silt in the cool indigo depths of my frantic brain.

Whirling after hitting a spot of melted snow

Slick from the afternoon sun and yesterday's sledding adventures

I slam against the hardened snow, ice, and earth beneath me

Sure, it'll leave a bruise

But for the moment, I'm struck with how nice it is to not have time to worry

About assignments, assessments, assemblies

The mental reflex of worrying will be back

But for now, my brain is spinning

Focused on the frantic issue

Of tumbling down a snowy, treacherous hill

And I'm looking forward to the crash

When I reach the bottom

In a crowded space covered in mishmash frames, there's a bench, the kind your feet are always grateful for when walking through the twisting halls of a museum. While the borders of what's on the wall are scuffed and splattered with mysterious colors of paint, the bench is somehow pristine, a plush green velvet that's not mussed at all. When sitting, and looking around, there's a breeze blowing from a window that provides some light, a breeze that stirs up the musty air looking for a place to settle and dwell on stress. A breeze that feels like the one that blows on my bad days, the breeze I feel while overlooking my city from a hillside.

The clickity-clack of a sainted keyboard comes from somewhere, cutting through the silence. On the cream-colored walls (the same shade of the birthday cake frosting made by my mother) is a range of scraps and pictures that have been squirreled away, tucked into safekeeping. In a gilded frame sits a scribbly mess of marker from when I first grabbed a Crayola product, a monument actually stored in a tub of kid drawings saved from the recycling by sentimentality. A memory, flickering in the starlight of that evening with stove-made s'mores, tasting of inside rather than woodsmoke. Bundled away from the chill, face lifted to the sky, taking the snapshot that hangs now. A melding of the Milky Way and fireflies, blurring the horizon in the dark.

Pawprints of pets dead and alive, cloth of baby blankets made by great-grandmothers, a shadowboxed pair of tiny Sketchers TwinkleToes, ones that I was so proud of. Jelly sandals, flowers pressed in a dusty phonebook one humid summer by my grandmother, a stick of the gum I always stole from my grandfather. Scars earned from childhood escapades, mental maps of my elementary school, the sound a new book makes when the spine cracks from a first opening. On a central wall, in a frame more meant for a Renaissance piece sits the feeling of a summer evening, driving in the pinkish sun while the radio statics in and out. Next to it, the smell of fall leaf piles. The chocolate-covered faces of my cousins at Easter, smearing their picture-ready clothes in Hershey kisses and Rolos. Then, the crisp winter air inhaled by a rosy nose as a sled starts to take flight. 50's music after dark, a strange echoing of jive that just feels different than it does in the day time. Scars earned from childhood escapades, mental maps of my elementary school,

In a storage closet overflowing with a bulk of geometry papers that have consumed many a tree lurks the child-like enjoyment of learning, buried. It's the kind of thing you don't open, for fear of a tsunami of responsibility tumbling out on top of you. Like a sloppy closet filled to the brim with toys that were supposed to be put away; don't ask, don't tell.

But nobody goes to a gallery for the storage closet, and certainly not for the smaller stuff, the stuff deemed only special enough to be tucked by a door. The stuff of creeping worry, the trapped negativity slamming against the picture glass, seething and storming, trying to bust the lightbulbs of the glaring overhead lights. The feeling of being yelled at by a community pool's lifeguard, of failing, of making the mistakes I torment myself for. Worries, ignored, a headache of a piece whose message is too strenuous to figure out, streaks of angry red crossing an anxious onyx like a Polluck.

Through gritting my teeth enough to make my jaw sore, I work through it, ignoring the storage space of doom, the stuff I tuck away behind doors. Working through a trudging winter, a dry cold, a heap of requirements. Wrapped in blankets, frantically texting for human contact, tearing up at the occasional hug. And so, in that gallery that smells of morning coffee and fabric softener, I fall back on good memories. The kind of recallings that take precedent over the lurking bad, the kind preserved, curated, as if they were a piece worth millions.

I’d like my last words to be something I randomly say, unaware they will be the last thing my earthly mouth utters. While I have never been one for spontaneity, I think I’d rather my last words be something I don’t plan as I do everything else. (Even still, something along the lines of Roald Dahl’s final words, a proclamation of love for his family followed by “ow, fuck!” would be a good way for me to go.)

The last bits of winter are going out fighting, and people are desperately drenched in monotone. But every year without fail, brilliant violet hyacinths bloom on the levy downtown. They start feebly, with only a few clusters, but as time progresses they spread to the entire steep slope of grass. There may be the occasional daffodil that deigns pop up, a bright spot of canary and cream in the midst of purple, but those aren’t important.

This specific genus of hyacinth is called grape hyacinths. The flowers come into fruition as fragrant, bulb-like clusters on the stem. Grape hyacinths are the first little rays of sunshine in spring, growing first amongst crocuses and the budding mists of green on trees. This is the Midwest, any weather goes. They’ve had to adapt to the random jumble of weather conditions, up against battering rain, furiously whipped wind, or late snow, still surviving in enough numbers to send their scent out into the rainy spring air.

Winter is old and worn out, no longer creating snowy fun or a pleasant, frisky chill that gets dogs to prance. Bundled against the wind that seems determined to be unpleasant, a walk seems like the best option, even though it’s like walking in a charcoal drawing done in a fifth-grade art class. In the midst of a smudgy and graphite grey world, the flowers offer a little bit of hope, and it’s glorious to climb the levy stairs and see them for the first time. If you look around the flowery stretch of the levy, you’ll see a sewer grate, juxtaposing with the dainty growth around it. It’s in an incredibly strange position, but it still seems eternal, despite its eccentricities. I suppose it has its reason for being where it is, whatever that may be. It juts out, its foundation creating a flat place for the top grate, creating a perfect little place to sit as soon as the cold eases up.

It’s in this desperate time my mother and I go outside to this sewer grate, overlooking the dismal city. We’ve been on the lookout for the flowers. Finally, finally, we see some of them. We’d hook our old dog to her leash and walk her up there for some fresh air. Her short hair isn’t good for Midwest winters, she was built for hunting on distant veldts. She has only been outside in short bursts for the past months, gangly legs rushing out to do her business then hurrying back inside. She’s a big dog, meant to run, so she’s itching to stretch her legs. With a jingle of the collar and a little dance at the w-word, we’re off. It is time for a walk.

The old dog’s name Rhodie, she’s a special and pretentious type of dog called a Rhodesian Ridgeback. The breed doesn’t matter to us at all, she was acquired because she found a soft heart walking through a flea market when I wasn’t even born yet. It was a hot day, even for dogs originating from Africa. My father carried her the rest of the afternoon so her paws wouldn’t be scorched by the pavement, a deed shamelessly repaid by years of bad behavior. Subsequently, many an I-told-you-so from my mother. So here’s the dog, horribly behaved, simply named, and very tolerant of all my childhood antics. Even though she bit half of the head off of one of my baby dolls, she let me tug on her ears for balance when I was learning to stand. Her disregard for what she was supposed to do was justified by the excuse that she was good in all the ways that counted.

With a little extra pep in her old movements, we ascend the stairs. Sadly, pep does not equal ease, her hips have been hurting her as of late. Rhodie makes it up the steps because nothing has ever stopped her from doing whatever the hell she wants. The height of a stove couldn’t stop her from eating two large pizzas, so what’s a meager staircase? She also knows there will be geese, the spawn of Lucifer, and they must be watched. Reaching the top of the stairs, her nose quivers. We smell flowers, she smells trouble. There are some geese on the bike path.

My mother settles in on the sewer grate, and Rhodie sits close by. She doesn’t walk around too far or lunge for the birds like she used to. She may not be a puppy anymore, but she’ll be damned if she lets the geese near her girls. Her graying snout faces the muddy river and she watches, her cloudy eyes fixed on trouble. I crouch in the dewy grass, my quickly filling fists bursting with flowers. There will be no going home until I can’t possibly hold any more. All is well. Spring is coming, and the geese know who’s boss.

Rhodie didn’t make it to last spring. She had a long and happy life full of annoying my father, the one who vouched for her in the first place. Old age had started to catch up to the stubborn old dog, till one day I came home from sixth grade and she was gone. Apparently, it had gotten bad that day, her breath starting to wheeze and shudder, and the vet was called. Goodnight, old girl. I can’t say I didn’t see it coming in the rearview, closer than it appeared. I also can’t say I didn’t cry. Sitting in the passenger seat of my mom’s car, I was drenched in regret for not saying goodbye while hustling to school that morning. While I doubt it mattered to her, I liked rubbing her soft salt and pepper ears and untruthfully tellingly her she was a good girl before I left.

The hyacinths were gone, mowed down as they dwindled, shrinking under the emerging sun. It was strange to see the amount of short brown hair covering my clothing decrease. As a year ticked by, rawhides were tossed and condolences were expressed. When spring rolled around the next year, my mom was sad to see the purple littering the levy. It made me sad too, but the hyacinths couldn’t go to waste. As I had so many times before, I gathered a fistful of the flowers and enjoyed the fresh, cool air. The geese kept their distance because they dared not mess with Rhodie’s girls.

This most recent spring was a complete trainwreck, but the hyacinths still grew. The occasional scandalous daffodil was there too, and naturally, the geese. After a heavy dose of late snows, ugly weather, and a little thing called a global pandemic, the grape hyacinths somehow bloomed wildly. They didn’t go to waste. Filling up cups and miscellaneous vases, they decorated the house with violet and a sweet smell. I often sit on the sewer grate to do school work and think about the old dog that “protected” me from the admittedly evil geese throughout the years. The old dog who never snapped at a tiny me learning how my legs were supposed to work, who ate the food she wasn’t supposed to. That dog was with me for much of my life, a sturdy presence through it all. While she ripped blankets with her claws, chomped on baby dolls, and was occasionally a general menace, she truly was good in all the ways that counted.

There's long, silver hair flowing from the old lady I'd like to be. Silver bands climbing up the arms, silver wrapped around the fingers. A sugary sliver of pie for the grandkids, picking out which rings they'd like to keep, not dwindling my collection acquired from years of a life well lived.

“You know,” one says contemplatively, “I’ve been planning this for a while.”

“Yeah?”

“Oh yes. Remember that project we partnered for in seventh grade? Since then. Down to the food I'll order in exactly 22 minutes.”

“Ummm...” says their companion, a senior, remembering it clearly and suddenly wanting to run.