Written by Gretchen Filart
These arms were often ropes that stopped another from looping around someone’s neck. These ears:
river mouths where someone’s grief emptied. These lips: graves that swallowed someone’s, everyone’s
secrets. This heart: a garden for the dying bees, thorny weeds, and indigo-banded kingfishers you can
only find in these islands, among other forgotten in-betweens: table for two, for three on dusky coasts,
long bus ride conversations, you are my ride or die. The I cannot imagine life without you. Before some
new arms, new ears, new lips, and new hearts become the new ropes, new river mouths, new graves,
and new gardens.
Under this sun, I am wilting. This ravaged land beckons rain. When a kingfisher swoops in, I ask,
What’s the point really? Birds and trees are my only true friends now. The point is, she said, this whole
garden is only ever kept green by tending. First, you make a clearing. By god, you will puncture a finger
and bleed. Your cells will spit the thorn out. You will fear other thorns. But the garden is not quite
finished yet. You will take your little tear-moist hands and your little rake. You will let the fear go. You
will fall in love with the act of clearing again. Make no mistake: You will. One day. You will stand in
your lonely garden and you will brave the sun. You will breathe a prayer out of breathless lungs,
shivering. Then, you will say, I will make my garden because of and despite it all. Because it is my
garden and I deserve one, even if I am the only one tending it.
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Gretchen Filart is a Best of the Net and Pushcart Prize-nominated poet and essayist from the Philippines. Her confessional pieces draw from love, motherhood, healing, nature, and intersections and have received distinction from phoebe’s Spring Poetry Contest and Navigator’s Travel Writing Competition. Connect with her on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok @gretchenfilart, or via her website, ourworldinwords.com. She is usually friendly.