An abundance of morning glories, pink and indigo sprawl with majestic authority across the tall lattice fence board, their faces open to the early rays of dawn.
He'd been with her that day, when she'd found the perfect pieces of wood to grow them on. The boards had leaned against the garbage dumpster at the Dollar Store and he'd plucked them up in his broad drummer's fists and gingerly placed them on the bed of their truck.
For five summers they grew among the red roses, winding across the corner of their carport until a magical wonderland developed there, under the watchful eye of a humid & hot Kentucky sun.
When the sky opened up and thick sheets of water poured down, their cozy corner of the carport remained dry and safe as they snuggled together & watched the wall of rain from a lover's size wicker chair.
It was in this fairy corner that she grew their son in her belly, rocked and nursed him on the hammock after his birth, and fed friends crunchy salads during drum circles. In this magical place where the garden filled itself with seashells from Florida and geodes from the local creeks, she'd painted water colored landscapes and wrote dreams in her diary.
From view of the wicker chair, strategically hidden among the winding green vines & colorful morning glories, she would spy the seasonal blue heron as it fished in the pond across the road, and gaze upward at the mountainous landscape above her back yard, to a cherry tree under which sweet Cloudy, their beloved cat, was buried.
A day came when she stood silent in her paradise, heart heavy with grief, shock and betrayal over a newly discovered affair he was in.
Alone. Absent were those warm hands and the kindred mind she had come to depend on.
He'd held her trust in his palm, now sudden helpless rage like liquid lava in her stomach grips her and the beauty of their corner becomes her agony. She bursts toward the morning glories as if their fragile radiance is now the source of her pain.
With the fingers of a mad woman she tears the vines down, moans and sighs accompany a sound of living broken things being tossed to the dirt. The lattice suddenly bare perches naked in the sunset, where nearby on the seashell garden, sits a mound of breathtakingly beautiful morning glories and roses piled high to the sky.
"I'm sorry" She stands over them, looks down at them uprooted, torn, dying but still so very beautiful.
In the modest house on the hill at the top of her backyard lives an old woman. She has recently returned home from open-heart surgery, and with fragile body stands at her window and watches the young mother throw a desperate tantrum under the budding stars of a night sky.
She is a silent witness whose own heart feels as broken as the flowers on the lawn. She has watched these babies grow up over the years, meet at fifteen years old sneaking in and out of windows, dating others, getting back together after long years apart. Such a dance of youth and love. Now this!
A month passes, the young mother is at the deli, flowers long since burnt in garbage fires and hauled away, she skims over new obituaries in her small town and sees the neighbor woman's photo. She rushes out the door to her car and slams onto the road toward home. With a flushed face she realizes that she'd not been alone that bitter afternoon.
He passes her in his truck and stops when he sees her stricken face. They act as enemies now, un-talking, ignoring, harsh words have been spoken and now silence lingers between them. Yet he stopsand rolls down his window as she hands him this obituary with their neighbor's face framed in black and white at the top of the page. A sad shared look, and they drive onward in opposite directions.
Nine years later while visiting the town again with her two children, they beg her to drive by the old house where they once lived. She pauses at the empty driveway.
In the back corner of the carport it is bare, no seashells or roses wind their way across lattice and brick. The house has been sold to strangers who are clean and orderly with no time to imagine fairies and gnomes along the carport stonewall.
"The magic is gone", says her daughter.
"Yes, it is." she whispers, pushes the gas pedal to the floor and keeps her eyes forward as their car climbs the steep hill, turns a left corner at the modest little house and heads back to the main road..
By Fawn (Ms Claritynow)- some creative writing to share w/u 12/10/07