Pulling you out by the roots
by GEO JOSEPH
Because they got in everywhere:
thick, gnarled, woody ones that break halfway up rather than relinquish their hold;
thin, spidery ones, beneath the little sprouts so tender it feels cruel to yank them up.
This is the genre of metaphor you’ve made necessary: love as invasive, a surrounding army of weeds.
But have you not seen the tumbling hillsides of Pittsburgh—
trees so shaggy with ivy they turn into Seussian creatures, too much verdant life to be contained by any respectable form?
Have you not seen the rooftops of New Orleans, lush with bright yellow flowers on the vine
no less beautiful once you learn they are intruders, on their way to crack the foundations and smother everything in their path, dazzling all the way?
Root (1): the way everything I learned about you took hold in me, every time you surprised me by recognizing something of mine—
which felt like a mirror, an acknowledgement that I was putting down roots, too, in you
Root (2): the same verb I used for burying my face in your armpit, high on the naked smell of you
Root (3): the thick part of you at the base
A root pushes, gently but insistently, until it makes a way; until it stretches open and fills the space given to it
Root (4): you in the stands cheering for me, in the last moments before I made the thing between us real, and flipped your switch
the switch that sends up the barrier at the root of you; that invisible fence across which messages get scrambled, and honest affection bounces back, stunned and undeliverable
But I let you take root: I welcomed you in. I wanted this thing to grow. In fact all I could see was what I wanted:
a humble patch, gleefully unruly next to our prim neighbors
your corner, my corner, and the part in the middle that was ours.
Mine growing around yours, our legs entangled in my bed on a hot day in September.
Maybe this is why the pain is so searing, so persistent:
it takes extraordinary effort to kill something that desperately, stubbornly wants to be alive.
Geo Joseph is a writer living on the west side of Chicago, originally from western Pennsylvania. His work has appeared in Hobart and The Hardball Times. He previously worked as a sportswriter, and now works as a teacher.