Why, July?

From the garden it looked like whatever she wanted.

Untainted, fresh, and free air.

Away out of the wild, sleazy, city.

Away out of this world!

My twentieth birthday had been packaged neatly with silver paper, tied up with ribbon, and stowed away on top of a shelf gathering dust. It was one of many things that I had written off over the past year. However, as my birthday has quickly approached, I have decided to pull my sentiments off of the shelf, unwrap them, and take a deeper look. I’d like to understand why I’ve been feeling so scared.

Sometimes I spend the day in the garden and leave smelling like sweet basil, tomato stalks, and wet dirt. I’ve become the neighbour who wears their bathrobe outside almost religiously. I read and I write and I cry and I laugh back there. I smoke and I eat cherry tomatoes on buttered toast back there. I lay in the wet grass beneath the lilac and rose bushes and I stay there until I feel like me again. I used to write in this same spot, about how I’d move away and make all of the right mistakes and ultimately I'd write about how much I would grow. And I did. 

I’ve noticed a lot about myself while being back home and I’ve read a lot and I’ve thought even more. I sometimes contemplate who I would have become if I hadn’t had to spend so much time alone with myself, if I hadn't had to sit myself down and look into my own eyes and learnt how to relish in my own company. I go out to walk early each morning when the sky still looks dusty and the air is new and light on my shoulders and spine. I deliberately pass my favourite garden in my neighbourhood, the one with the stringy red japanese maples and long seedy grass. They let birds build their nests everywhere, on their porch lights and the crooks of tree branches. An abandoned nest sat on their lawn when I walked by the other day, it looked like a small boat amidst the sea of their untrimmed lawn. They have a big green maple tree that shades their entire yard and raspberry coloured peonies with sticky sap covered stalks alongside roses in various shades of red, pink, and orange. I have never seen orange roses growing in a garden. I'd like to sit in their garden and write. I think I'd be content there. Nobody else admires it because it’s so overgrown, but I know that it is tended to with love and care. I think that’s why I love it the most.

Life before the lockdowns used to be so messy, and this past year has been so quiet. We used to share lip balm and drinks and smiles with all of our teeth. It feels as though the entire world is now small talk and lines wrapped around the grocery store. It seems that all there is left to do is embrace the supposed, messy, uncertainty of being human. And wait it out. July air can be oppressively hot and summer storms hang heavily in Ontarian air, but lately I’ve been sitting in the warm grass and eating rhubarb while looking up at the moon. The only person I have to keep up with now is myself. I work at a bookstore most days of the week and I sleep normal hours and I lead a messy life. Life in isolation has made my mind feel like a big tangle of pink yarn, like the knots that fall at my mother’s feet. I used to be exhausted, always trying to be older than I was and catch up with those who were years ahead of me in life. It never felt any good. My birthday crept up quickly and quietly, as it always seems to find a way to do. But now, I think that for once in my life I actually feel the age that I am turning. 

With love, Alyssa.