The Gardener
ANALISE BARRETO
The flower bed lay vacant,
Its cracks were so deep,
No flowers grew from its brokenness,
No colour peered from its roots,
Where set upon it, in perfect tragedy she stood forgotten,
carved from stone, she was immovable.
She loved in silence,
Thinking no one would notice her,
Her mind wandered with the possibilities of
being known, being loved, being wanted.
Her whispers were choked breaths,
Her melody running flat as her song falls into the silence.
Yet he heard her cries lost in song,
He heard her voice that carried itself into silence in the wind,
For he was a Gardener that saw her pillar and embraced its imperfections.
He looked upon her stone exterior, covered in wilted flowers,
the sweetness of her naked body draped in a blanket of decaying flora
and saw longing.
He was a man whose skin had been torn with the blood-drawn pricks of imperfect roses,
He stared at her soul and saw heaven.
He spoke in heartfelt adoration “I long to walk through your garden,
For I shall run my fingers along the wildflowers,
I shall sing praise to the wind,
I shall kneel at your alter and worship the land you have built”
‘I shall not fill your cracks with mortar, instead I’ll tear the path apart,
so that new foundations can be laid to rest in the garden of your heart,’
‘I shall not own you, as one cannot own something so divine, instead I shall look for you in every lifetime, hoping to catch a glimpse of paradise.’
‘I proclaim most ardently
that my love can no longer be shared
since I have tasted the sweetness of heaven upon my lips,
I have touched the skin of the divine,
I have heard the voice of an angel sing.’
And yet
And yet
And yet
He kneeled before her,
His knees covered in the foundations he had laid,
Yet no flowers grew,
No colour emerged from her petals, as she quickly shunned them from the light.
She twisted and turned as he reached to touch her,
To again feel the softness of her petals under his fingers,
To witness her stone turn from grey to blush pink marble,
she was melancholy blue, she was every colour under the sun,
Yet she disguised herself under the thick thorns and ash from those who burned her.
“I can’t love you in fragments” he would say,
“Instead, I will love you incessantly, like a dying man whose thirst could be quenched with a single drop of liquid.”
“I want you, like I’ve never yearned for anything else,”
“I speak of love and dust, until my throat is dry.”
He would take her silent love, her tortured soul, as long as it was his.
He would take her seeds and grow a garden,
so full and vast that it would swallow him whole.
Finally, she stared.
She stared behind stone eyes with unbridled curiosity,
For his words were a prayer,
A confession for something she wasn’t ready or able to understand
He watched her and saw heaven, but what if she wasn’t ready to be worshipped?
Oh, how he would take all her cracks and paint them gold.
For what is a gardener without a garden.
Analise Barreto is an aspiring primary school teacher with a passion for storytelling. Her stories often weave together the warmth of small-town life with the complexities of love, creating relatable and heart-warming narratives. When she’s not shaping young minds in the classroom, you can find her crafting tales that captivate and inspire.
