In a world designed to make you feel left behind, let’s forfeit the race and go for a walk.
Where you tell me the story of your past racecourse and I will tell you mine.
We will look at the flowers but not forget the dust that choked us before.
We will breathe in the damp earth but won’t repress the dry feel of the asphalt road.
We will talk in metaphors but won’t enter the oblivion of hard truths and the logic that cuts.
We will be loud with our laughter but still remember the silence of our trials then.
We will walk but still remember how to run.
For the garden we have chosen is the embodiment of a world left behind, yes, but that world we left behind was where we were born.
That world was the dark light that stung but let us see the blood we were shedding from each other’s wrists.
That world we left behind needed to exist for us to find this garden of relief.
And this garden is our home now, beloved, a home for us and our children.
We have to act with love lest we turn this heaven into the hell we came from.
We will have to grow grasses of gratitude lest the soft earth turns into the asphalt we escaped from.
And my beloved, know this too, our descendants may have our blood coursing through their veins.
But the possibility still persists; they might then choose the asphalt over the rain.
I know the rage that will drown us if this possibility turns to certainty; I know the helplessness that will seep into the battle-worn scars on our soul.
But my love, know that my hand will make home in yours and my lap will be the nest for your soul.
Know that the children are our blood but not us, our flesh but not us.
Know that the garden we built for them may feel like flowery jails to their touch.
We will have to let them return to the asphalt again, if their hearts are set, return to that world to which we bid adieu.
For their soft hands might long the roughness of concrete blooms.
We will wait for them here in our garden of love to come back home when they will.
And if they don’t, my love, fret not. My heart will stand and watch till the end of time on your broken window sill.
…now that you’re here
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