What You Called Me

I was crying (because of a B+ and the handful around my hips). You were waiting until I was all wrung out, because there really is no calming that; it’s something like that penny in preschool, something like that glass top that bursts when you test the surface tension of water on that penny – not that – but something like that.

I cried so much and I called it nerves, and I called it silly, and I called it a mystery and then you called me a garden.

“Ellie, you are a whole garden.”

I have never been called a garden before. You lifted my stone head and told me about the florae in my frame. I have never been told that truth before. You told me I am the totality of the things I grow.  

I like to think I am something easier to see than a sum, but I am not. Nobody is very easy to see. I like to retreat to denim and foil, but I know I’m bones. I know I’m a whole heaving soul – and, thank god, you know what that soul is made of.

*Doodles inspired by the botanist that takes careful care of me