I traveled so long. So long. Over winding roads that kept abruptly ending at roadblocks. Get out. Climb over. Somehow, in the next scene, which always appeared as a continuation without any transition as is the case in dreams, I was again in my shitty car, clunking towards an uncertain destination. When I arrived he was in a tiny garden. The dirt was loamy and dark, and still somehow moist. His sleeves were rolled up mid-forearm. He was tanned by sun and earth, a dark brown of health and deliberation. He was uprooting plants. Small, square root systems, dripping with dark ground sprouted green leaves, small and bright. He was laying the uprooted plants carefully to one side of the garden. He did this until there was nothing left in the garden but the soil. We talked. I don’t remember what was said. I realized foolishly, staring at the small green, still living but disconnected plants, I had traveled all this way to see a stretch of dirt and clay, our uprooted garden. I woke like a kid from a nightmare. Heartbeat in my throat. I started the day with muddy coffee and a freedom I had never felt before.

In your wake the beads of the abacus fall like apple blossom petals. This world is too heavy to bear with moth wings, to disparate to hold together with cobwebs but this hope is too beautiful to relinquish. I see the cut of my cheekbone in its mother-of-pearl sheen. Treasured set of combs, I have cut off all my hair.