She grows from the ground up

Field of golden sunflowers, empty cicada shell on a wooden garden gate, a bright crisp apple, a dead fawn on the side of the road. Oh, Artemis, a sharp inhale of grief.

I hold he/r hand as we drive out of the city into greener air. 13 months since I woke up to lungs opening, knowing I was no longer burning.

24 months since we drove across the Seal Island Bridge over the Bras d'Or, crossing a threshold I did not want to cross. The pain of the loss still catches at my throat, knowing everything had forever changed.

The papers signed, the cats in their cages, all our possessions packed away, while the sunflowers still grew in their pots on the deep blue sanctuary deck I created under trees. The paint barely dry. Left for another.

A dear had walked through our neighbourhood just a few nights before. The eaglets branched in and out of their high nest, the fox on the side of the road waiting for us each time we came back from the Highlands. My hot pink bikini packed away, unaware I would not hear a chorus of seagulls or that constant rushing sound of waves crashing into the shore, for a very long time.

Salt water and sand between my toes the night before we drove across the bridge into another life, as I saw the sun set into the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Breton for the last time.

Today, my hand reaches out to golden sunflowers. I had forgotten what they had once meant to me. Remembering the seed I planted long ago in downtown Hamilton to symbolize prosperity back when I believed in that kind of magic. How I woke up one day to three decapitated sunflowers that never got to bloom. Food for squirrels.

Today, a stranger takes my picture, and then my love meets me with their huge smile and a basket of peaches. It is hot. We keep driving. Singing in the car. Always singing.

I look up Clytie, an Oceanid nymph, daughter of the Titan Oceanus, lover of Helios. They are separated by an vengeful Aphrodite. He is forced to forget, and she is turned into a heliotrope or a sunflower (depending on the century you hear the story).

Parted forever as she gazes and turns toward him each day.

As he moves across the sky. She grows from the ground up.

And I wonder what the older story may be. There is always an older story. I wonder why women turn on each other, and what it means to be separated from your devotion for so long.

The golden yellow petals against the bright blue sky simply love the sun. Simply being.

Bees land in its head. Soon it will turn to seed.

And I keep choosing to love.