21st Century Demeter & 21st Century Disaster
by Skye Preston
demeter,
i shouldn't have to tell you this, but i never did take up gardening the way i promised you i would. something about the dirt stains that would never fade from my best pants, the tools i'd never lift from the weather worn cement and carry to the sink to reincarnate their pristine shine, the tedious hours i would have spent hunched over a small plot that (given the lack of greenness of my thumb) would never grow, the rainy days and pesky bandits that would steal my flowers and tear my vegetables clean from the ground. grueling, is the task of keeping a garden, one that these vine-like thoughts that tangled my mind dissuaded me from taking up. i do apologize for relaying this message, but i did promise you updates. if you do indeed get this, know that my neglect of the garden is in no way meant to be a disservice to your memory. though the garden rots outside, you flourish within my mind.
yours truly,
disaster
demeter,
you should not have to hear this, but no flowers grace your garden (if i still can call it that) anymore. empty dirt beds line the outside of the house; where dahlias used to burst with buds, where lemon trees used to bear their fruit, where you’d smile and laugh in your dirt stained fruit-picking cargo pants, in your rag-tag faded pink bouquet making shirt. i’m sorry, i'm sorry, but no flowers adorn the table anymore. i do wonder, and do tell me the truth, would you be very upset if i confessed i had not kept the pants? or the shirt? it seems a great waste to keep the weathered belongings of one that no longer exists, but do tell me if my careless handling of your items causes you any distress. i shall gladly buy them back if you should wish me to.
yours,
disaster
demeter,
i should not admit this, but when spring rolls around as it did mere weeks ago, i hear your voice. oh, how angry you are with me! about your garden, about the flowerless beds. the beds should be bursting, instead they are dark and empty, cobwebs cocoon the fence you built around the snapdragons, how you loved to keep the snapdragons. and you, you. you scream in a voice twisted with rage, frozen in time like the flowers you pressed between your pages. you howl. at me and my antics, my neglect of the thing you held dear. i have mistreated your garden, mistreated your memory, mistreated you. i know, i know, i know. i wish you did not have to know. and please, i beg you to remember that it is you i hold dear. but i have been trapped. in roots of grief, stems of grief, and mangled rotten weeds of grief. that is what i am, really, a rotten weed of grief. i will never decay, a sickening thought to gardeners everywhere, i will only continue to kill.
yours truly and with the sincerest apologies,
disaster
Skye Preston (she/her) is a writer and musician from California. She loves writing poetry, fiction, and long letters to people who will never read them. She is attending a high school dedicated to the arts, where she studies creative writing. In her free time, she enjoys playing the piano, hiking with her dog, and rewatching Notting Hill for the hundredth time. She has been previously published in Ice Lolly Review, SF Youth Anthology, and Synchronized Chaos.