Never had the creakiness of the hinges in his apartment door made him feel so at home. Its sound the same rhythm and tone as the gates to his garden. He called it Paradise. Back then an array of colors sprawled along the sides of his pathway made of stone, so vast that the rainbows were often mistaken for a reflection, leaving the river streams to feel like the path’s extension, and in his eyes as long as the path he walked was within the confines of the garden then true north was always his direction -- shining light bounced off of his white robe feeding the flowers like medicine. He was a late arrival to early bloomers but he settled in. He said, “it’s not what you know now but what you now know that you are not that makes what we’ll become.” So I told him you are not the Father only the son. The horse not the rider, not the product but the buyer. So buy seeds with money saved from tin cans to save on mason jars, and it will become clear:

Great wisdom unshared is a seed to a beautiful flower unplanted.”

So in his wood-floor apartment at the edge of the window base, he planted a flower in clean water and a clear vase as a reminder that the woman he’ll love all his life, though not by his side now, was still there by fate. Just waiting for the right time, the right light, and the right direction. He said, “as long as the flower reflects in the black of my eyes, while I stare at the streets and their passerbys I can ride like a surfboard on a wave of temptation and still see to it not to crash into the tides. “‘Cause if there’s anyone exempt from corruption and free from the baggage it brings I am the grocer at the end of aisle, appreciative of the things I have in life and thankful enough to smile.” But that clear vase only made its way at the edge of the window base as a display case.

He gave the flower a name but forgot it -- it got lost in the layers of names he gave for each pedal. He saw them fall one by one to the surface, and as he watered the roots he never refilled the kettle. Depending on the wind they’d fall in different places, shriveling up on the ground until they’re core was taken. I never knew where they’d land but I knew where they’d take him -- farther. Than the distance between the summer and the winter. One step from the fall one toxin from the cancer.

He knew all he needed was one flower to make the whole place come together, but instead he settled for many pedals. Their dying colors made brick walls around their saviors. Wood panels with water damage they fell down with the nails. He cut air holes the size of watermelons in the belly of the beast where he laid,
thinking it would help him down the path he walked and still breathe clean air.

So I took the mason jars and those pedals and built an hourglass to see if he’d be done by the time they hit the bottom, to see if the never-ending flow of beautiful colors could ever satisfy him. Instead of shining light on the flowers he shined it on his sun-dial pointed false south to try to make his own fate. To try and make the extension of his wisdom and try and extend the time he’d make mistakes, thinking that when his light ran out he’d start making what he knew were right decisions. He’d stop taking the beauty to make it into self-betterment, instead he made himself better at manipulation. Planting flowers in fields of tainted soil and windward waters, to see into the roots that laid inside his flower.

Like a child born out of deceiving,
Her name had no meaning.

And as she fell apart she wore her lungs on her sleeves,
breathed thick air and made clouds shaped like all her broken dreams. He broke flat lines with morphine shots to try and hide the graphs they made of her life, X axis for time she spent in the rain, perpendicular to all the times that he changed. And when the gardener was done she remained displayed in that vase. I tried to veer my eyes away from her to keep my heart in the right place. Despite the colors that pulled me in, and pushed me away from the throne, I saw deep roots inside that stretched like my arms have done. For a moment the wind stood still, I begged for one last chance to grow. So I approached the foggy crystal and I told her what I know.

“You are the canvas not the paint
a piercing thorn amongst a hoard of razor blades,
a canister of gasoline among the flames,
that I tried to consume and save.
I saw my solidarity as a wholesome defeat
that I could control with each paint stroke
while the blank canvas was always the reality,
and the holes it pierced in my heart