<sub>'You gave me hyacinths first a year ago;
'They called me the hyacinth girl.'
—Yet when we came back, late, from the Hyacinth garden,
Your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not
Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither
Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,
Looking into the heart of light, the silence.
Od' und leer das Meer.

-T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland</sub>















I remember one summer, bloated pink and orange sunsets over wispy white cotton clouds drifting over the open bay and above my hair blowing in its wind, we picked blackberries in the thorny bushes by the rocky dunes where the homeless painted mermaids with two fins and octopuses making love with the fisherman’s wife over the wheel of misfortune. it was called the bulb and the water slowly drifted into the open bay, past the thin white paths lined with thorny bushes and wild flowers, past the tall tulle stems and pink flowers heavy with pollen, irises with flower heads like heavy purple birds of paradise, our bodies falling from the small sandy cliffs filled with hard pebbles and gull feathers. We broke the thick stems of fierce tiger lilies and purple hydrangeas, small moon-pale irises next to the fiery magenta leaves of bougainvillea hanging over trees and missing chain-link fences. Lilac buds decorated our hair and the pale wisteria lay in our arms while morning glories glistened with yellow sun-centers. I remember wearing thin white dresses as the small petals of red clovers entangled in my hair, aligning with the eyelashes framing my eyes until we could barely breathe but for the river scent of wild flowers dripping. I wanted to take you by the mouth until something inside of us grew from the ground, into these blackberry bushes until our torsos were caught by thorns and we could not move but for the pale pink petals fluttering from our eyelids in the summertime. Yet when we came back, late, your arms full, and your hair wet, I could not speak and my eyes failed, I was neither living nor dead, and I knew nothing.






love, Lilly