“I will be the gladdest thing under the sun! I will touch a hundred flowers & not pick one.” ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay
April showers brought May flowers—that seem to weather the storms of June with ease, or simply fall to the ground to nourish and make room for all this new growth… The season between the spring and summer has always been my favorite—regardless of where I’ve been planted—because I love the rain even more than the welcome sun (and yes, because of the flowers), but also because you can feel the stirring coming straight from the center of every living thing...
There is a luscious darkness to this season as well—it exists to counteract all the light—and we encounter it whenever the storm clouds roll in… Or we encounter it within our own selves—find ourselves wrestling with it as the nights get shorter and give way to the slow but steady lengthening of the daylight hours. Death seems more stark alongside such colors—blue skies make the clouds look bone white while green shoots through the rot and brings hope with it… But also losses, also grief.
We’ve aged during winter—perhaps we’ve thinned out or gotten softer—but to fear this process is to fear life itself, to fear living. I’m learning to trust my body’s own seasons and even to forecast the worst of its storms… Time continues to escape me—since I can get lost for days on end in the details—but I don’t turn away from the effects it has on me now. I try to embrace them… If decay is what feeds these flowers I love so much, then may my own bones burst into such a display someday.
