The Garden Kept My Unanswered Questions

How it begins

I planted the question too early.

The packet said wait until the ground had warmed, but I had mistaken urgency for weather.

By the third week, nothing had come up except a plastic fork and a root that belonged to someone else's plan.

Ruth, on the next plot, asked whether I wanted onions.

I said I wanted an answer.

She considered the empty row.

"Onions are more likely."

So I took six, carried them home in the pocket of a coat that smelled of rain, and made dinner without reaching a conclusion.

That was March.

In April I learned the names of three weeds and forgot the appointment I had been using to divide my life into before and after.

The weeds did not care. Neither did they forgive me. They were busy making more weeds.

I began to admire a thing that could continue without calling continuation a lesson.

By May the beans had found the string.

I wanted to say they trusted it, but they had no opinion about my vocabulary.

They climbed because the light was there.

At the fence, Ruth's kettle boiled on a little stove.

She had two cups and no plan to explain the world.

We sat beside a bucket with a crack that let the water leave slowly.

Some days, that was the only clock I could bear.

I did not tell her everything.

She did not call my silence growth.

When the rain started, we carried the tools inside, leaving the chairs exactly where they were.

All evening, water filled their shallow seats.

By morning, the birds had found a use for what we had not finished.

I wrote that down, then crossed out the sentence beneath it.

The one that began, This means.

The garden kept the space after it.

For once, I let it.