May 17, 2022

“I’m just here to weed,” 

I said to my friend as I stood in flip-flops at the outskirts of a kidney-shaped garden bed.
I could have been talking about the dandelions, which had sprung up the same way 
the first semester in college turned my stepson into a giant. There were little tufts of things
sprouting out of the pea gravel after all of the rain. I had a spade in my hands and the sun
had finally emerged. All the elements were there, pointing to certain purpose. But we
kept talking, squinting from the sudden brightness of the day and the giddy fortune 
of standing in the same yard, and even though everywhere I looked, the weeds 
had taken over, eclipsing the careful plantings made the summer before, 
it was hard to resist the languid splay of crabgrass, the vivid stalks of horsetail, 
the woozy relief of being outnumbered by thousands of stems tipped in yellow.