We Let the Grass Grow, Long, In the Garden of Eden

A domestic elegy.

Statuesque.
Memorialized.
We let the grass grow under our feet.
The lawn seeded, watered sparingly.
The sunburnt yard trying its best to recover.
But always, there remained a patch unhealed.

Flying West again,
my brain feels bruised—
trapped in its bony cage,
rattling against the fault lines of a marriage
I chiseled every ordinary moment,
etching desire paths of independence.

There is a chemical shift when we fight.
Insecurity arrives in waves.
I become falsely emboldened to r-e-a-c-t.
The hairs on my arms rise,
each follicle a tiny antenna
reaching skyward.
My veins pulsate,
my eyes dilate,
and words fall out—
hard and fast—
waterfalls collapsing from a great height.

Do you remember the time we visited Bridalveil Falls in Yosemite?
We drove for miles
You in awe with Mother Nature.
and me, unimpressed with these wondrous specimens
“Done,” I said, “I’m done.”

Later that day, we stood in the golden hour,
our children playing hide and seek.
Too old for it, really,
but not yet too old to want us near.
Sometimes they orbit closely.
Other days, they shoot away like satellites.

You commented that they are going through monumental shifts.
“Aren’t we all?” I remarked, “Always.”

Here, the sunset melts like nuclear fission—
bright, brief,
and strange enough to believe in again.
A tequila sunrise
left undecided by its purpose.

And still,
the grass grows beneath us.
Vines wrap around the bones of our legs—
tibia, talus, fibula—
a quiet entanglement
started long before we noticed.

I once told her,
when it all falls apart,
when I am empty,
I will only listen to Spirit of Eden.
The maternal comfort in that record,
the small, careful architecture of sound—
it tells me relief is real.
That art triumphs conformity.
That love conquers all.

Our world has turned upside down.
We move in phases:
love, lust, despair, reconciliation.
Perhaps maligned like the lesser loved, yet harmonious, equinox.

And I wonder—
how is this fair at all?

I reflect on what was done to us.
Where did our tenacity emerge?
Is this strength to admire or reject?

What are we passing on—
quietly, unspoken—
to our children?

And will they one day stand, lonely,
in a front yard of their own making,
watering plants that will die,
as an apocalyptic horizon fades into the night.

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