Gardening

I stood in an overgrown garden and I told it all I knew about us.
It listened in the same way that you do.
The larger leaves, distracted by the wind, made attention
deficient shadows on the small patches of grass and the creased
petals of wild flowers peeked hopefully through windows
bordered with thorns. The dry, loose mud seemed the most
interested, rolled closer to my voice by sympathetic insects who
know all too well the difficulty of not sharing daily breath with
the one you love. Some nettles nodded at my monologue,
tentatively at first and then with absolute urgency as they
noticed my eyes might drip, it hadn't rained in a week.
The tree in the heart of the garden shared its stance with you,
somehow there was your arm in the branch that bounced
aggressively as my words got louder. An acorn, disturbed by the
bounce, bullet-fell to hit the roof of the shed, its wooden tiles
torn with pencil shavings of neglect. The acorn's journey lent its
rhythm to my rant until it reached the murky, malnourished
pond where it slipped in with an ancient ripple and I did a
subtle throat-clearing as I felt they were all getting a bit too
distracted now. I stood on the two planks of the bench that
weren't rotted and I think that the height helped what happened
next. A broken piece of terracotta pot seemed engrossed in the
way my lips trembled when I said your name. And so I said it
again and again and again and that's when the rains came.
Heavy, gutter-filling drops. My audience drank and came alive,
so alive now. They had such a lot to catch up on they didn't
even notice how I drowned, my open mouth bubbling,
a stone water feature.