A Boundless Place

"It was a boundless place to me and silenced, as the awful sea."

 — He touched me, so I live to know, Emily Dickinson

It’s been too long since I’ve spilled out these words that don’t really make sense to anyone but me. This is how my brain works when I’m not worried about being understood.

When I was little, a teacher or a book showed me a picture of a brain and told me that’s where my thoughts came from. That this lump of gray matter was what made me me.

But that felt wrong—because I had been in my brain since birth, and it wasn’t gray. It was magical. A garden. A woodland. Brimming with flowers and trees.

Each flower: a woman.

Some delicate. Some hardy.

Some blooming bright, others dull, mere filler foliage.

Once, I asked for a bouquet of just baby’s breath, and they said, “No one does that. Baby’s breath is filler—just the stuff between the showstoppers.”

Maybe baby’s breath is all the women I’ll never meet—because I was too focused on my own blooms. Maybe it’s the daughters I’ll never have, because I was too busy trying to bloom myself. I don’t know what baby’s breath really is. But I know it’s something special.

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Dandelions—those scrappy, friendly weeds—are flowers too. And medicine. Always there, even in death, granting your wishes. I can see a dandelion every day. I can be blessed with her every day, no matter how long she’s been dead. I blow her seeds into the wind. I want her everywhere. Forever.

Daffodils are the first to bloom. Yellow. Cheerful. Friendly. Consistent. Arriving like clockwork, multiplied by the cold ground over winter. Ready to wipe away the frigid fears of my heart.

In Victorian times, gardenias meant innocence, purity, secret admiration. I still don’t know who she is to me—or if I’m anything to her. Just that whatever she wants to be, I want for her too.

Clover seems mundane, but look closely, and you’ll find luck beyond belief. She’s the friend who pops up in the middle of a soccer field and says, Adventure awaits.

Cornflowers—true blue, almost electric—once wild before pesticides pushed them out. She shows wildness still survives even if it's a domestic, cultivated garden.She’s the defiant streak of color in a gray, overmanaged world.

Tiger lilies. Traditionally they represent resilience and courage. But these spunky bursts of orange make wonder how they grow wild in ditches and royal gardens alike and we don't question their right to either space.

Sunflowers. Such deceit. So bright, so tall, so pretty. I felt small next to her. Ate too many sunflower seeds thinking I’d grow as big as her. But I just got the shits and a stomachache. Dwindled in her shadow. Sunflowers grow almost as big as trees. I was only going to shrink next to her.

Zinnias are multitudes. So many colors. Little yellow flowers inside flowers, petals within petals. Infinite. I have not met her. I probably won't. But I hold on to hope that the dream flower—the dream woman—exists. I don’t need to meet her. Just curl up in the yellows and pinks and reds that she is, for a moment.

Not all flowers in my mind’s garden are women.

Some flowers are just ideas.

Ivy is always moving. Creeping, climbing fences toward new places.

Daisies are childhood. White and bright—not yet soiled… but getting there. Always cut down too quick for a cheap bouquet.

Lotus is sobriety. A flower that floats above the dark depths that would drown most. But not her. She floats.

Lavender: the soothing comfort of God. The sweet rest and relief I find in communion with her.

Honeysuckle: that silly way nature teaches you joy. Like when someone shows you how to pull the stigma out a honeysuckle and suck out the nectar.

Allegedly, marigolds deter pests in a garden. Plant them to keep out squirrels, bugs, deer. I plant them to guard against society’s parasites: the computer, the news, the rat race, the grief of consumerism. 

(Could I be more than what I buy and own? I hope so.)

Tulips are tulips. Two lips.

Women on women.

How all women have two sets of lips.

I have two sets of lips.

How I wish to kiss our four lips—every combination possible.

Roses are just writing. The process. A rose by any other name, right, Shakespeare? Smells sweet—but why did he forget the thorns?

Magnolia is sad womanhood. A flower—but on a tree. Doesn’t all female sadness stem from the branch of a man?

Iris is angry womanhood. Persephone, splitting her time between worlds. The seething underneath, the smiling surface.

I don’t have a flower for happy womanhood.

Maybe baby’s breath could be that.

Little moments between sadness and rage that keep you going.

I haven’t seen happy womanhood—but I choose to believe in it.

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Back to the women. My women. My flowers.

My mom is a violet.

An African violet, really.

Always on the windowsill.

The only plant she couldn’t kill.

Blooming purple in desert-dry dirt she didn't water for weeks.

I, naturally, the opposite.

Fuchsia. My favorite finicky flower. Dangling in baskets, wilted by single touch.

My grandmother? Forget-me-nots.

Because I forgot her—until the end.

Yet when she died, I got a little box with forget-me-nots on the lid.

What I couldn’t do for her in life, I’ll do in death.

I won't forget. I won't forget.

And most recently, Aunt Becky.

Pansies.

I knew so little of her growing up, except that she loved pansies, her sorority, cats, and Godiva chocolate.

And aside from the sorority—if I replace that with chosen sisterhood—she and I were the same.

Pansies aren’t just her sorority flower. They’re pretty winter blooms. Hardy and pretty well into November, when she was born.

It took me a long time to realize fuchsia, pansies, and violets were all purple.

That maybe we weren’t so fucking different after all.

It took a lot of death to see what my brain had already visualized in the garden of my mind.

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I guess my grandfather was a redwood—tall, steady, rooted, too big, too much. Blending with the forget-me-not blue to make us purple. I didn’t plan it. It’s just how my brain sees it.

Yes, men are trees.

Sheltering shade in the heat. Building blocks for homes. But trees can also block the sun. Drain the water. Wither any flower too close. 

I’ve seen it happen...

A willow looks inviting—curtains of green, soft and flexible, a place to hide. But the slightest breeze turns those branches into whips. They cut you to the ground.

A dogwood—flowering, thorned—man and woman both. Beauty with an edge. Not a crucifix to me, but I believe a dogwood would sacrifice. Would protect. Would bloom enough to remind you of beauty, but never without defense.

Pines? I can’t stand them. Good for Christmas, maybe, but only for a month. After that they’re prickly, messy, shedding needles that stab bare feet. Hug one, and you walk away sticky with sap, carrying the dirt of everything it touched. Their best contribution is death—for decoration, then disposal. Somehow, my pine, still lives and sullies the world next to a dump where he belongs.

But a walnut tree—its nuts like little brains—feeds you. Hard, bitter, useful. Put a few in brownies: practical sweetness, crunchy wisdom. A walnut isn’t flashy, but it lasts. That’s worth planting.

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Yes. My mind has been a boundless place of flowers and trees.

You’d think infinite beauty could salve a soul—but it doesn’t.

It is lonely.

It is silenced as the awful sea.

It is people-less, no matter how many people or ideas it holds.

It’s all, in the end, just metaphor.

It's just plants I can't touch.

And there are so many more…

More to bloom, grow, wilt, die.

Oak trees, azaleas, orchids, orange trees, bluebells, hostas, black-eyed Susans—so many I don’t know yet.

If you need me, I will be trapped in the center of a boundless garden. Never found. It would be cool if you tried though. I think I left a bread crumb trail.

Perhaps that wet, gray, wriggling lump—seven pounds in formaldehyde—is what they meant by "brain." Maybe that's a better brain.

But this is mine.

Purple-streaked, flower-strewn, tree-wild, and terribly quiet.

A garden.

A forest.

A boundless place.

Silenced as the awful sea.

Emily Dickinson saw the garden too.

Please, please, please dearest. Tell me your favorite flower. Maybe I can't have you in real life, but I have a whole plot ready to plant you in my mind.