Happiness Doesn’t Always Come As Rainbows and Unicorns
“No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.” -Heraclitus
There was a lemon tree in the corner of my old yard. Came as a scraggly gift from a stranger who lived two blocks over from my old apartment four years ago. She’d stapled handwritten posters to telephone poles-adding to the assortment of announcements about underground punk shows and dog-sitters and yard sales. When she opened her door, a strong smell of cigarette smoke and baked beans greeted me. I gathered 5 dying plants from her in an attempt to nurse them back to life. Over the course of a year, one died and I gave three away, but I kept the lemon tree.
Most days, I think our hands weren’t made for texting. For hours of typing. For the internet. They were made for warm presses, tending fires, watering flowers, planting trees, cutting through brush, snapping twigs, sewing patches. I’ve switched out my midnight existential crises and 2:00 am conversations for 7pm dates and lipstick-messy kisses. Traded the bottle for the kettle.
The wish for death has quieted, yet it still beats an almost imperceptible tune at the base of my skull. The restless dream of running away has turned into a hope for hardscrabble…
