My Favorite Flower (T.Q. Sims - New Orleans, LA)

       

       This bed was once a garden where his skin smelled of jasmine. The first time we laid in this garden, his scent reminded me of New Orleans in spring, where I could easily come across a blooming growth of jasmine covering a wrought iron fence and lose myself in the ecstasy of breathing my favorite flower. 

Tonight was not a night for having him bloom. After the argument, the same one we’ve come back to again and again, we went to bed without the familiar acceptance of non-resolution. We both turned our backs to each other, pulling tight the bedding that covered our bodies and the distance between us. I clutched the blanket until my own clinging reminded me of his. I let go, and I let him greedily pull the cover to him. He curled his body tight like a seed buried under the covers. The sickly-sweet smell of rejection and blame came up from the bed of dead leaves like the smell of compost. Each tainted breath was a reminder of all he had said. I laid there curled on my side, aware of the tension in my body, his body, the room. His breath was unchanging and sharp, a light rustle of leaves. He too wasn’t sleeping.

Sympathy tried to take root in me. It grew upwards as I told myself that it wasn’t his fault that he was so clingy, that he couldn’t handle my wandering eye, my own neediness which he feared would lead me away from him. 

I told myself that he really does need me. That it’s not entirely a bad thing to be needed. My thoughts, crowding my mind like weeds, took me farther from sleep. I regretted telling him how much I want. I regretted seeming needy, like him. Questions and considerations, things said and unsaid sprouted and grew as I wondered how to tend to him, to myself, and to my own need. What is the difference between want and need? I wanted so many things, but I didn’t want to leave.

I told myself that there was nowhere to go. Everyone I cared about sees us, less me. Where would I crawl off to—some sunless spot that I cannot afford? His undergrowth has woven into every aspect of my life. I’m entangled. I surrendered too much ground, too long ago. It’s too late to uproot.

        Under the thin veil of something like sleep, I half-dreamt, but awoke as dawn came through the sheer curtains. I should have gotten up, should have saved myself. His creeping vines wrapped around me. His needy roots sank deep into my flesh to suck the nourishment from my body. The garden is beyond repair, overgrown, and taken over by what we’ve become. Us.

        Before self-blame or any need to repair him could again swell in me, I hardened. My sympathy withered, but it was too late. My only means of escape is anger. I imagine myself becoming toxic so that what he draws from me will eventually poison him, causing his flowerless vines to wither. He has become a mass of strangling vines, and I have become a monster. 

        He sat on the edge of the bed, and the vines digging into me pulled painfully at what I hadn’t felt in years, a loss of me. He looked back over his shoulder, and in his cold stare, I realized, he would never again bloom for me.

        This is no longer a garden. This is a well, and I am trapped at the bottom.

Published: Beyond Queer Words (June 2022)