Seven

seventh missive - sculpture garden

You write new spells that you do not have the courage to test. You ask me to hold your hand when we bike across the footbridge. You sculpt poems out of wood, rhythm of grain, meter of curvature.

Your paragraphs blooming like topiaries, pruned aggressively as new phrases sprout out, almost malignant in their aggression. We take the steps down from the field to visit the statue garden, knowing that every time we touch the statues, we create a new statue from the old with what we leave behind (a graft of skin) and what we steal away (a sliver of stone)

At dusk when the sky is red and blue and everything else is silhouette, the trees become sculptures, and the sculptures trees. The garden bleeds into the surrounding woods, so now the whole environment is a gnarled growth laden with intent, like a banquet’s worth of potentially poisoned wine.