I went up to our hill down by the Everglades today- the one we drank red wine on and ate homemade biscuits your mother made. The sun kissed the sky a blood orange as you told me about your father and the way he would scream at you at night. The smell of ash wafted through the air, like a homemade banana bread, burning in an oven, as I told you about my dog and how he ran away when I was 3. The trees are on fire. The Park rangers call it a “controlled burn.” And as the ash began to mix with our own sweat, you opened the bottle of barefoot as I got out the paper cups. I think about bananas and how I’ve always liked to eat them before they were ripe. You smiled as you poured the bottle, watched the scarlet liquid sink into the bottom of the cups. Below us was a cemetery, for those who wanted to be buried beside the trees. The smell of decaying oranges whirls through the air as you brush my finger and hold my hand. A woman wearing all black walks up to a grave with tears running down her face like a waterfall. We watch her, but we don’t say a word. Maybe the world was ending, or maybe it was as just beginning, but everything was beautiful here- yes, everything. And I went up to our hill down by the Everglades today. I smelled the fresh cornbread and the dying fish. I held into a pile of ashes, remembered what it was once like to hold your hand. I gazed below at the graves, thought about what it would be like to molder beside this place. And I always liked to eat bananas before they were ripe, and babe, I think I consumed this thing bit too fast. But the thing is, I still think it is all beautiful, this place, this hill, the ash, the fire. Because I am older now and the sawgrass doesn’t make me bleed in the same shade of red as our wine. Because I am older now and the mangroves might latch on to the water, but honey, I don’t cling on to anything anymore. Because I am older now and the bromeliads shine, the way your smile did when I drew your name in the dirt, and the orchids still glow, the way my cheeks used to turn apple red when you kissed my forehead. Because I am older now and the cypress trees still smell of pine, even though I don’t remember what you smell like. Because I am older now and this place might go up into flames, like the way we burned over the years, but I still think it is the most beautiful thing: to have loved, but to love yourself enough to know that even the most sacred of things need to burn away in order to grow into something new.
baratheonpilled
janainaart
jacobvanloon
germansingergirl
