7.26.22

In the garden of the house at the end of the world, you are telling me about nasturtiums and how quickly they grow. How surely they take over everything else and cover them in pink and purple bloom. Nasturtium flowers and leaves have a spicy, sharp taste. I take off a small piece to try and put it in my mouth. I cough immediately and you laugh at me. In early spring, you continue - before they bloom, you can pick the buds, pickle them, and use them as a substitute for capers. This is during the time when we were fermenting everything, amazed with what a little bit of care and time could do to transform an ordinary thing into something delicious. We made poetry of it to make the waiting bearable. We looked at our cabbage, mushrooms, and garlic fermenting and then we looked at our life together and thought: these things take time. 

Memory itself is a kind of fermentation, a life beyond what was alive before, what will never be alive in the same way again. Writing, then, is the salt, sugar, and vinegar where I submerge memory until I am ready to see what became of the places and people I loved. In the brine of writing, memory becomes and unbecomes itself, breaking down in some places and reforming in others. In this process, I remember myself; who I've been and the possibilities of who I might still become. 

I wonder if it is that writing makes me braver than I am, or if it is that writing is itself a form of bravery. I may never return to that garden overrun with nasturtium, but here in the brine of memory, it's still early spring and you are standing next to me, talking about all the possibilities of life in front of us.