In My Secret Garden

I open the gates into my secret garden.

They are antique, made of a golden iron that looks like it has weathered from many violent storms passing through.
My garden is a place of sanctuary. A place where I escape into sheer silence, besides the noise of the wind and the insects flying by. BzzzZZZzzz.

I can sometimes hear the petals of the flowers opening to reveal a beauty of a world that could fit into the palm of my hand.
When I close my eyes and listen, I can hear them coming to life, like a baby crying when it breathes its first gasp of air in the world.
My garden is a place where I do belong and my heart does not harden.

I walk slowly, my hands neatly tucked at my side. One step forward and I wiggle my toes in the dirt, two steps forward and I raise my head to feel the magic that surrounds me against my face,
I stop and I close my eyes. My hands begin to feel sticky from quenching my palm. I relax my arms, then my fingers.
I breathe in the air and I get a little tickle in my throat from the pollen.
I resist the temptation of a sneeze and instead I control my breathing.
My eyes begin to weld up of tears from the power of the sun and the sensitivity of what my eyes have seen.

I can feel the glory of the sun pulse against my brown skin and with my small fingers, I begin to caress the growth of my curly hair.
It feels like my hair has grown three inches in a few minutes, accelerated by the authority of the sun over my vessel, my follicles.

I take another few steps forward and I turn to see a little bird gently hovering over a gathered group of Gerber flowers. The bird seems to soar above worries, above fear. I am entranced. I watch it with such admiration for rising above dangers and burdens, to levitate to a vantage point of gaining a unique perspective. I wish I could fly like the little bird.



After being transfixed for a few minutes and feeling the first beat of sweat drip down my brow, I decide to move deeper into the garden, into her womb, to hide inside the organ of roses — long stemmed and full of colour, function and importance. Under the shade of my willow tree, which stands alone to the right-side of the garden, I decide to lay my burden down.

I bend my knees and slowly sit down, breathing in every ounce of air as it were my last. I feel Mother Earth tell me it is my time to grow, to be nourished by her and her infinite desire to cultivate growth.

I look at my fingers which now show dirty from running my hands to stroke the earth. I sit by the elbow of my willow tree’s largest branch and close to the rose’s bed. I prick my finger on a thorn of a delicious red rose and I watch the blood ooze up and over, like a pot overflowing from boil. In slow motion I watch my blood hit the ground. I prick myself time and time again. Each time I am equal in pain and I become more hopeful of understanding why it is that these roses have thorns.

A rose without a thorn, a lover without scorn.

I begin to feel light-headed from the heat of the sun and loosing so much blood. Enough infliction, I decide. I rest down on the ground and wash the dirt all over my body, tucked between the roses and my guardian willow tree. I turn to the left and there it is again, the little bird sitting on the red rose I had first pricked my finger upon.

It seems to be looking at me. I smile and we observe one-another with curiosity and admiration. Until the pain of the wounds subsides, I stare into the birds yellow face and examine with jealously, the beautiful blue colour that dresses its feathers. The bird encourages me to rest, with a small soft noise and a polite pecking sound that reminds me of my cockatiel when I was a child.

Eventually I fall asleep…with the little bird at my side. When I wake several hours later, I am sheeted in my own sweat, but I feel as though I have allowed my body and soul to be cleansed by everything alive.

Until I return again…I get up with a smile on my face and forget about all the pricks on my fingers. But I never forget that yellow-faced, blue-feathered bird.