May 12, 2015

pruned

“I’m ready,” I said to the stylist, meeting her gaze in the mirror as she held
a fistful of my hair in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other,
even though of course, I wasn’t sure I was. Later, my neighbor would walk
her trio of dogs by my front lawn as I sat on the stoop watching evening advance.
“Your butterfly bush needs cutting back,” she’d say, and it would only be then
that I’d see it was teetering with dead limbs, thin and hollow from the long winter,
while a clutch of sprigs—green with adolescence—clamored for acreage.
Now, pruned, the plant is suddenly thriving, Spring on full throttle, and I wonder
what else has been writhing under it its old bulk, itching for removal and disclosure,
tired of keeping its magnificence, like an iceberg, so far under.