Wisteria

wisteria

By Skylar B.

Mors mihi lucrum. Death to me is a reward.

I sit below the wisteria tree, every sunrise, every nightfall. I tell her things I have told no other; I tell stories of my past, my woes, my aches and pains. She is my most kindred spirit.

I am insufferable. I find myself at this intrepid stage of girlhood: sixteen and longing—a martyr of her own accord. A lewd, naïve, obsessive thing, and utterly unstoppable. I spend my adolescence biting my cheek, head full of blood, stomach, lips, tongue burning red. As a deer longs for water, so does my soul for vengeance; a double-edged blade, haunted by naught but the empty hole in my chest. Barefoot and broken, I watch the world through hate-tinged eyes.

Agony is on my bitter tongue, in my gnashing teeth, the apex of my throat—my skin, my veins, my blood. Underneath my fingernails, in between my aching toes. He fills all the hollow spaces as I lean against my tree, clutching to my anger like a riptide. Anger as a defense against sorrow, a defense against pain. I attend classes, submit assignments, converse with the diction of an affable, effeminate fool, a technicolored jester. And yet, it is never enough.

One late afternoon, I stooped by my tree. She was looking particularly down, her petals drooping farther than standard. I didn’t stop to ask if she was alright, merely took solace in her additional cover, engulfed in my usual nook—avoiding everyone, neglecting the world.

The next morning, I began my path to see her anew. I, the martyr, meandered. I wandered with weeping wounds amidst the wisterias. Passing an Italian Cypress, he glared down his nose and scoffed at my appearance. I looked up, ragged and sleep-bound, a butter-built girl with a knack for paring.

“Why do you look this way?” He asked.

“I’m suffering,” I said simply, too tired to say much more.

He turned away, “Well, you’re leaving a stain.”

I continued on, following the spiral path as it tightened and tightened, clenching in unison with my chest.

I did not see the wisteria for three days after that. She was not surprised, as I am the girl who is always disappearing, receding into space and time. I am the apparition you see in your bathroom mirror, the gaudy, haunting thing you wish to forget—I can’t help it. I was never taught the difference between haunting and hanging on. That evening, I lay on my bedroom floor, content to watch the ceiling fan spin. I decided that I’d like to learn to speak the language of flowers.

“I am not normal,” I told my tree the following day.

“There is no normal,” she conceded. “Your people created normal to explain the inexplicable. It is subjective. There are seven billion different kinds of normal, do not clump yourself onto another and take away from their own version.”

I did not thank her, I just walked away.

Each day, the hole grows larger, the vast nothingness gaping wider. Today, I walk along the rickety path to my dearest companion for the one-hundredth day. She greets me with a smile and wave, even as the other trees huff and puff and turn their backs.

My wrists hurt from nights of reckless decisions, my feet ache from running from myself for far too long, my chest burns with the ache of holding myself up each day. And so I look to my tree and simply begin to sob.

She looks at me compassionately and allows me to hide in her nook one final time.

 Gathering my bearings, I ask, “How do you always maintain your composure?”

She smiles and laughs, causing a few petals to float off into the wind, “Who says I have any composure?” Her teeth gleam in the light, dimples wide. She smells of longevity.

And so I tell her, “You are Wisteria, you embody resilience.”

“Yes,” she replies, “But not without failure.”

“How could you possibly fail, you’re a tree?”

“‘Tis true,” she admits, “But not everything is always as it seems.”

She takes my hands between hers, and whispers into the breeze, “People assume. It is in your nature to be critical. They assume you aren’t sick until they see the sickness on your skin, pinpoints of each way in which you ache. Child, sometimes demons are invisible. Sometimes the poltergeist strikes from inside, slipping between your narrow ribs, leaving no trace. He is sneaky like that. Just because you cannot see the claws or the teeth does not mean they are not tearing my insides apart.”

“I’m sorry,” I tell her. “I will look harder.”
“I know you will,” she chuckles, “Would you like to know a secret?”

Of course I would. I would never have told her such, though. I am too proud for that.

“The strongest thing I ever did was continue living my life when I wanted to die. That is resilience.”

I ask, “How do I stop feeling like I am missing out on my own life?”

The Wisteria replies, “Dance, read, laugh, scream, and cry, and gasp. You must toss pebbles into streams, run, and hug your mother. Remind her you love her, remind yourself you are loved. Forget to turn in your homework one day and live with the guilt. Hold your teddy bear close, even if you have friends over. These are what make up life. People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute. But if you enjoy yourself, if even for a minute, that’s one less minute you haven’t lived.”