Time's Garden

content warning: allusions to violence

Third day of Spring, 25th Year

I’ve begun to hear a song in my head; a lullaby whose tune is known to me, somehow, though the words are foreign. And the voice that sings it, it is a woman’s. It is beautiful and faint, like birdsong taken away by the wind. I know not what to think of it, for I’ve never had a faceless stranger sing into my mind’s ear. I would feel concern if not for her cadence, her soothing melody wrapping a sweet-smelling breeze around me. Gentle she is, like waking a child in the morning. Though I don’t need waking.

I shall recount to you the song:

I’ll see it in the flight of the doves,

I’ll find it in the kiss of once-loves,

I’ll search for it in errant grains of sand,

I’ll wander hither and thither all over the land,

I’ll bury it deep in very old dirt,

I’ll dig it up again for what it’s worth:

All this time I’ve lost.

Does she not sound mournful? Adrift? And yet she doesn’t ask for my help. I’m afraid I could not be of much use in any case - how do you help a voice inside your head? - but I wish to. Perhaps she will speak to me again.

Fifth day of Spring, 25th Year

The lilacs bloom fragrantly in the trees in my little secret garden. Vines of white flowers crawl up their trunks and snake across the ground. Leaves hang low from tree branches, five-pointed, like outstretched hands. My garden loves spring.

I heard her speak to me again. She sang that little song all day, a melodic breeze in the back of my mind - all this time I’ve lost - as I walked among the violets and their dyed eyes, gathered the little white heads of the baby’s breath.

Until she changed it - sang new words. I know not what to make of the addition, but then, I did not know what to make of the original, either.

I’ll weep wasted years and indulged-in fears,

I’ll spit out unspoken words, together in thirds

I’ll eat my starved heart and before I depart,

I’ll retrieve all this time I’ve lost.

Sixth day of Spring, 25th Year

It is a peaceful day; I don’t know what bothers me. I spend it all in the garden, and I hear naught but the rustle and swipe of the grass blades against each other, the leafed branches above me. I am surrounded by what I love, yet I want. What do I want? Have I grown so used to her voice in the days she has sung to me that I can no longer tolerate near-silence? Is it the silence, or is it loneliness? I’ve never been lonely before; I don’t know why I would start now.

I began to write like this when I first heard her. Maybe it was so I could tell somebody. I don’t know who would read this. I’ve taken a reed and broken my skin, written along the lines of the skeleton of a leaf. I’ve taken a rock and pulled apart its grains, rearranged them in script with the darkest ones. I’ve made my own hair into a brush and painted with the crushed inky blood of the dyed-eye violets.

I’ve put such effort, such attention to this. Why? All for a day of not hearing her voice.

Twelfth day of Spring, 25th Year

She has come back to me, at last! Her voice, her song, her words return, and with them, the breeze. I sit in the center of my garden and watch enraptured as the open-mouthed irises bob, listening to her sing over and again. She repeats only what she’s sung before, again until the end of the day, when she adds something new. I was so almost asleep I barely caught the change in the wind:

All this time I’ve lost, all this time I’ve lost.

Babes are born without their mothers,

Girls die from unwanted lovers,

Innocent hearts rupture from lead,

Lifeblood blown out the back of their head,

Rivers slog and seas congeal,

But it’s okay because it’s not real!

All this time I’ve lost.

I felt a strange and foreign sadness at those new words, and yet it hit with the ache of an old friend. I don’t know why these alien words bruise me as if they know where my weak spots are. Perhaps spending so much time in my garden has withered my spine.

I looked again at the irises and saw teeth in their wide open mouths.

Fourteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

She’s gone and left me again! What is this game she plays? Does she seek to lead me astray? Does she merely toy with me, enjoying taking away that which I’ve come to crave? If so, she is a monster. Is it not monsters who have voices like angels?

I shall no longer let her define my days, this voice in my head. I shall be again what I once was.

Only…what was I?

A gardener, certainly. Though I didn’t plant any of these. A wanderer, for sure, but I haven’t really left my garden of late.

Hm. Perhaps I am just another flower.

Fifteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

I’ll see it in the flight of the doves,

I’ll find it in the kiss of once-loves,

I’ll search for it in errant grains of sand,

I’ll wander hither and thither all over the land,

I’ll bury it deep in very old dirt,

I’ll dig it up again for what it’s worth:

All this time I’ve lost.

I’ll weep wasted years and indulged-in fears,

I’ll spit out unspoken words, together in thirds

I’ll eat my starved heart and before I depart,

I’ll retrieve all this time I’ve lost.

All this time I’ve lost, all this time I’ve lost.

Babes are born without their mothers,

Girls die from unwanted lovers,

Innocent hearts rupture from lead,

Lifeblood blown out the back of their head,

Rivers slog and seas congeal,

But it’s okay because it’s not real!

All this time I’ve lost.

Fifteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

Who wrote this?

I’ve opened this earth-made diary of mine to find an entry already for this day, with words I did not write. Do my eyes play tricks on me? Does the reed with which I write? Who has found this? Who else is here?

Sixteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

Eyes turned away will not see

Minds shut down are not free

Memories ignored will not be

All this time you’ve lost.

Sixteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

I fear her now.

Somehow it is no longer my mind’s ear she speaks into, but perhaps this place where I write? It could be no one else but she! I see she seeks to tell me something, but I do not understand. It nags me; it pulls at my edges, like a finger tapping my shoulder. But when I turn around, no one’s there.

No one but the mouths, the hands, the eyes. My garden is a corpse.

Sixteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

You’ll see it smoke in the raging fires,

You’ll hear it when the leaders become liars,

You’ll sing it in the chorus of a dirge,

Or perhaps in the chorus of a church,

You’ll fight it because they told you to,

You’ll kill it because it would forgive you too,

All this time you’ve lost.

Seventeenth day of Spring, 25th Year

I’ve begun to awaken in parts of my garden I don’t remember falling asleep in. I have seen shadows between the ferns and the grasses, and peered through the skin of leaves. It is as if the garden is thinning, falling away, an ink spill seeping through its colors. The irises, the violets, the baby’s breath all turn to me with accusation, and I begin to wonder if I am the impostor.

I feel as if I am losing time…

All this time I’ve lost.

Seventeenth day of Spring, 25th Year

You don’t get it, do you?

Seventeenth day of Spring, 25th Year

What is this?

This handwriting looks like mine. Who are you, that you seek to deceive me?

Seventeenth day of Spring, 25th Year

I do not deceive you. You are the deceiver.

Seventeenth day of Spring, 25th Year

Whom do I deceive? I do not whisper melodies into the ears of the peaceful. I do not tear at what they see before them. What have you done to my garden? What do you do to me?

Eighteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

You deceive yourself. I tear at an illusion. You are not peaceful. You are blind. It is time you see.

Eighteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

And what is it that I am blind to?

Nineteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

You tell me I live in an illusion, you accuse me of not seeing what’s before me, and then you leave? What is this awful habit of yours?

The garden falls apart, like its seams have been broken. I reach for the violets and the irises and they bleed out in my hands. The tree branches dip lower, the fingers of their leaves outstretched to grasp at me. What have you done? What have I done?

What am I missing?

Nineteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

They’ve gone backwards without you. They need you to return. Do not make me sing you the song again. You know the refrain. Don’t lose any more.

Nineteenth day of Spring, 25th Year

Twenty-fifth year…twenty-fifth year of what? How long have I been here?

I see the walls now, and I don’t know who put them there. My garden has lied to me.

I can see them in the yellow lines of the violet petals, I can see them in the dull shine of a white rock. I don’t remember leaving them. But…I left them?

You left them. They need you to return.

All this time you’ve lost.

They weep and they cry and they hurt each other. I’ve been gone too long. How do I get back? How do I return to them?

Nineteenth day of This, 25th Year

You have to remember. Remember me.

A day of Spring, some Year

But you still have not told me who you -

I’ve looked again at your handwriting. It is mine.

Very well then. I remember now.

All this time I’ve lost.