She is three years old. Toddling and running. Falling and tumbling. At the bottom of the garden. It is October. She is dressed in woolen tights and a corduroy dress. She wants these togs off, she wants to roll down the lawn and into the pile of leaves, bury herself beneath the musty damp of mold. She is content jumping in and out of a long, narrow puddle of rainy mud until her mother isn’t looking, then she sits and pulls off the rubber boots, and runs and jumps and lands in the leaf pile.
She listens to the roly poly bugs tell her they will see her in the spring.
) O (
She is nine years old. A magical number a fox has whispered to her. It is October and she is squatting in the dirt at the bottom of the garden, barefooted and wearing a pair of red leather lederhosen she found in the attic. And her favorite t-shirt with a smiling sunflower. She isn’t cold but she knows her mother would tell her to put on warm clothes if she saw her. But she’s not home. The garden is her world, the limits explained to her by adults, and she is a dutiful child so she does not wander over the wall. Very often.
She is digging a hole with a hand trowel. To talk to the earthworms. Hello, how are you, goodbye.
) O (
She is thirteen. A magical number the moon has whispered to her. It is October and she is cross legged in the loam at the bottom of the garden. She is troweling dirt into thrifted pottery, tea kettles and teacups, gently extracting the worms and letting them loose them back into the ground. She’s going to fill each one with fall-blooming flowers and line her windowsill with them. Her room has become a haven, the walls papered with art prints and cut up coffee table book illustrations. Her bed a sanctuary, her notebooks filling with poetry and sketches. She cannot draw but she can summon life out of the dirt and her bedroom is a hothouse of plants. One of her girls teaches her to macrame and this she takes to, knotting plant hangers.
A newt is uncovered, unblinking eyes, she gently pats him back into his early hibernation. Go back to sleep.
) O (
She is seventeen years old. On the cusp of everything. Her mother is in the house, angry and sad simultaneously, there is a distance between them. She is outside, sitting on the rock wall, facing outward. The wood is beckoning, there’s a brook there, if she crosses it there is a meadow just ahead. The moon is rising, a Harvest Moon, it is October. The world is lit in silver light. She shrugs out of her coat, toes out of her sneakers. Leaps down from the wall and into the wilds. She shimmies out of her jeans and pulls the sweater over her head. She begins to run.
An owl calls. Another answers. She runs into the forest, straight through the creek, splashing water, jumping over mossy rocks. She stops and listens, closes her eyes and strains her ears. A flute and laughter. A crackling bonfire. An invitation. I'm here! she calls out loud. I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!
) O (
She is ageless now. It is October. She has been working in the garden since dawn. Raking all the fallen leaves into a pile. Shoveling composted fertilizer over the beds, mulching beneath the greenery, singing a lullaby to all the sleepy insects and animals, birds and bats, tree, shrub, flower, bulb. She ate her lunch leaning on the wall at the bottom of the yard, looking out at the inch fill housing built where the wood once stood. So much dirt had to be hauled in to soak up the creek water and fill in the holes where the trees had been pulled out. There is no more owl call at dusk. At dusk, she sets a match to the leaf pile and squints her eye, imagining it a bonfire. The neighbors will most probably report the smoke. She doesn’t care. She thinks of her mother and how fiercely she didn’t care either. Threatening to burn it all down, to lay waste to springtime, decimate all plants and crops. She remembers promising her mother she would return. And she did. She waits for the immensity of the moon rising and casting her shadow long before she undresses. A moon bath, a cleansing. It’s time for change. A time to be wrapped in the embrace of overwintering.
Will she return again? She cannot answer.
She wanders purposefully to the bottom of the garden, the far boundary of the yard. She played here as a child. She wrote bad poetry here as a girl. She scaled the wall and ran away as a teenager. And her love found her as a maiden. The dirt is cold under the soles of her bare feet. The air is cool breezing around her naked flesh. She has forgotten more than she could ever remember. But that’s okay, it slips off her like an old skin. Dormancy appeals. It’s been a long day of chores and tasks. Her back aches, her palms blistered, her knees complaining. She kneels in the organic rubble of decades, the leavings of the living, the remains of the dead. Pets buried here, wild animals hit by cars in the road, all of her milk teeth. Where are you, she whispers. She must be very, very quiet now to hear the answer. Where are you, my love? she asks, leaning forward, scooping handfuls of the graveolent dirt up and feeding it to herself. She is so hungry.
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