“Girl, you rich rich.” -The Internet
I wish that a loud, booming voice can tell me that I deserve all of this, I have been saying to my husband a lot lately. Specifically about him, the man who every day is kind to me and joins me. He continues to dwell where I dwell, be on the other sides of walls from me. But there are other things, too. Things I would never have expected. A chandelier hangs above my head as I write this. Paintings are on the wall. Books line numerous shelves. Pigments and paint brushes. Rocks and skulls. Plants and their ephemera. Rugs and jigsaw puzzles. Hats on hooks. Antique bottles I’ve pulled from the earth and turned into vases.
I can go on.
When I go outside, Mayapples I have planted over the years have opened up their umbrellas. Instead of curlers and hair products, I have the curl of Ostrich Fern I planted the year I moved in. As it unfurls, the ramps I transplanted curve above the ground like serifs and the Virginia Bluebells lower their trumpets to the soil. This is what I pay attention to. The attention is all mine yet the attention, too, feels like it isn’t mine, but something gifted.
Things are awful, I know. Wretched and stupid, yes. Expensive and nonsensical, absolutely. Rage-baiting and baiting me, yep. Scary, uh huh. Luring my attention, sometimes, yes. The algorithm shows me dead children. The algorithm shows me dangerous men who dwell on the other sides of the walls of women. And then the algorithm shows me a beautiful, young, healthy person selling their lifestyle to me or talking about what they deserve and why they deserve it. It all matters in the crisp cracking eggshell of things. It all doesn’t matter in the years of starlight reaching us of things.
Some plants develop leaves that hold the water. Some plants develop umbrellas that distribute it. Sometimes holding the water is a form of giving. Sometimes an umbrella protects only what is beneath it.
When I look up and away from the screen, there is a community I adore. Throughout multiple visits to a local wetland, I watched a discarded iced donut in the grass slowly get eaten away. Simply because I went for a walk to escape nonsense, I once observed ants protect aphids on a plant called Fireweed because the ants love the honeydew that the aphids produce. Community is everywhere. Symbiosis is necessary. Communication is necessary. Ten years now I have bent down to a plant or pointed to a bird and said their name to my husband. And now he says them back to me, his finger pointing up at the sky.
I wish that a loud, booming voice can tell me that I deserve all of this.
