goats.

You know what got me today? Goats. A sweet little video of goats.

Out in the woods this very early morning, following the creek, hearing the thought only after I thought it - "Boris won't drown in those rapids, they're too shallow. It's alright." Feeling it again, how pervasive this is, how deeply entrenched in me now, a reflex not requiring thought. The light through the trees, finding a stand of trillium and jack in the pulpit, remembering our last day at the river, what words you said to me. How much you'd love this little spot, out here in a narrow stretch of woods. All of it.

And then we came home. Boris slept and I planted.

A morning of planting and pruning, thinking how beautiful this garden is, these gardens are, and how they are not mine. How I will be leaving them soon, onward to find my own next home, my own new gardens to build. Intermittently tearful.

And then I came in, and a sweet little video of goats destroyed me. Because it was beautiful. Because I can see and feel how close it is to mine. Because this life of mine will be beautiful again. And I will stand in my yard, lean on my shovel in some kind of gorgeous light, look out over galloping little goats, and know I am home. It will be beautiful. And you will not be here. My life will be beautiful again, without you.


.

sunday the 12th

Comes around again, Sunday the 12th. 3 years and 10 months. It's been hitting me hard, but then - there has been so much lately. Of course it is hitting me hard. I left our house. Left it in stages, but still - the last look, the last moments there, were not my own. Sometimes I feel like I amassed an emotional debt I will need to pay later, leaving that way. Well, maybe I already did - leaving the house, swallowing the emotions, not a half hour later, I became car-sick, dizzy, ragingly nauseous. So there we go. The body always knows.

I did have my time there. A few days before, I wandered the rooms and touched walls. Said thank you. Did all the things I always do when I leave a place that has sheltered me. There was also the matter of bucket on bucket of heart rocks to do something with. My mother wants to sell them. Yes, I find this disturbing. Very, very disturbing. Instead, I wandered the yard with handfuls of rocks, casting them and placing them, wondering who would find them, if they would be found.

I stopped at the garden fence, between the blackberries and the chicken coop he built, stood there, stooped there, placing heart rocks amidst leaves and roots.

And in a flash, perhaps a slow flash, I remembered I scattered ashes here, that day J. dropped the jar and I found a small pile of what was you on the street beside my parking spot. That day, I scooped up handfuls of body and bone, stuffed them in my pockets. I released them into the air, scattered them in the soil. Let you feed blackberries and echinacea, let you feed multiflora rose and bittersweet and mint.

So there, at the garden fence two days before I left, placing heart rocks, I realize, well - this makes sense. It is a burial ground, in a way. It is sacred space. You are, in part, buried here. We both are, in a sense. We both are.


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Phase one of this move is complete. For a few months, I will be in phase two, the middle place, the neither here nor there. Phase three, the adventure, comes soon after the 4 year mark. For now, I am perched here, in a place you should be if I am, a place I wouldn't be if you were.

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