I’ve been feelin’ a kinship with your plants lately, thinking about the gardens we choose to plant ourselves in. Moving here for grad school taught me that my roots were stronger than I would’ve guessed, even if they get all tangled up and knotted, and that I can learn to bloom in the driest dirt. Some days it rained so hard I thought I’d drown, and some nights I made bad decisions out of desperation to drink something in, and both of those ended up being okay. I would be okay if I chose a different garden. If I had to learn a new climate or new soil conditions, I could do that. But it feels so good to grow here with you. Not that you’re my world, or that you control my growth, but that the nutrients you give me are the very things I’ve always wanted.

You have a way of looking at me that reassures me you won’t leave when the sunlight goes away. I know my bones get heavy and my mind gets hard to read. It isn’t that I’m all in my head; it’s that I’m all in my heart. I look back at you and there aren’t words for that energy, that peace, that happiness. I didn’t know two people could lay themselves bare like that, sharing those little slivers of darkness, trading them like magic cards. I forgot how good it felt to be a soft person, a real person who didn’t have to moderate or mediate herself. Really, who are you? How did I find you?

I hope you see the stories that I see in your hands – your green thumb, sure, but also how I think my body will always rise to meet your touch. Those callouses, that scar, the width of your fingernails, watching your fingers dance across guitar strings and feeling them run down my spine. I’m falling in love with you, I can’t make it sound any prettier than that, it happens when I get to rest my head on your shoulder and listen to your parents’ voices on the other end of the phone, when I turn over in my sleep and you climb out and walk around and get back in bed to cuddle on the other side, when we’re the only two people in this city goofy enough to run our own made-up 5k in the pouring rain.

I’m all blossom, full-grown daisy, my face turned up towards the sky, soaking it in, and your garden, your life, I’m thankful to be in it.