i wait all week for the pruning of foliage and now it's fall and still i wait, even though it's an important time of year, as far as i can tell, for matters of foliage and horticulture or whatever is the appropriate david suzuki or whatever term and suddenly everything i touch has pruning shears, everything i delve into, everyone i surround myself with know the latin names and are way way beyond my fleeting love of miracle grow and into these things flowers and plants and things i have an incredible capacity to kill, terrible floodings or terrible droughts i take a seemingly healthly little violet spread and bring it home ohhhhhh coy coy little thing so sweet i place it in the window and play with it, and talk to it, and play glen gould to it, and this lasts between 48 and 72 hours and then i forget and in my guilt drown it or give up and let the poor thing leave this world...and i'm surrounding myself with people who are totally into this shit, totally into it, and as far as i can tell, really good at it...

and the gardener comes confused as hell but accepting the way it is, the way we are, and we hold hands as we walk through the parking lot, and we tell good stories and sad stories and i ask point blank what he's gonna do about the hw or me or us and he doesn't know, says he doesn't know and i'm an easier plant to take care of i think, stick me in the window and i'll grow and wilt and re grow and wilt and transplant me once in a while from little black pot to huge expansive clay one made in mongolia (OH GOB remember that poster in Shenzhen? the "make clay with our noses" or whatever it was? what WAS it?? god that was funny) and other than that i will thrive and grow and be the pride of any gardener and i don't know that he sees that yet, i don't know what he sees, but he lays next to me waking up at 3 coughing and i go get water, and i have a nuturing for him that i haven't felt since high school, and i don't know why...i think being with the men i was with, men that pushed anything remotely nuturing away, made me way too self conscious of it, but he smiles and says it's cute when i wash his coveralls for him, and hang up his clothes.

and the other flowerboy is more academic in his pruning...and it's different but good, he leaves tea at the back door and pops up when i need him and talks about foliage but in a different way...

and xxxx is around fleetingly and we don't talk about plants or flowers but work and business and he tells me all that is going on and i listen, and talk back and we hold each other, two people, our wilted branches, and infested parts visible to each other...

and all is easy and full and remarkable to find myself at this spot, in this place, so much has changed, so much is free and i think i see a new little bud next to the wilted branch on my pinky finger...

but honest to god, if i don't get out of this apartment today, i'm gonna start eating the desk.