i pass by purple and think of you

1

I find myself sitting on the floor of the high tunnel face to face with the bloom of an oregano plant. The flowers are a small pinkish  purple and my nose is almost touching their blooms.I breathe in the fragrance of the plant, the fresh earthy spice, and I miss him. It is mid-August in Southeast Alaska and the sun is high and heavy overhead. Somehow, 65 degrees in Southeast feels hot enough for a tank top and shorts. I am sitting on the ground picking the oregano leaves off the stems to bring to the kitchen, silent, thoughtful, entranced by the humm of bees, the soft breeze caressing my skin, the plants I am surrounded by, and bringing a sway to the big big trees outside. The breeze even pushes the huge dragonflies which run into the sides of the greenhouse with their wings droning on like white noise. My legs are pressed firmly on the ground below me, and I am a spectator, a stranger, and a cultivator of this oregano plant which is currently home and honey for a number of bees. I watch them land on the little flowers, just before my eyes, their fuzzy round bodies curl into the small flower. 

I can't help but think about how the bees relate to these flowers. Are they making love to the flowers, or are they simply existing? Or is love-making their existence? There is something romantic about it, maybe just because flowers are beautiful and bees are attracted to them for their sweetness, or maybe because nature itself can be romantic, as much as it can be brutal. Maybe because making love is as sweet as honey. Humans very well have just assigned this love relationship to bees and flowers for our own metaphorical poetic purpose. 

The bees do something curious after pollination, something I have never been present enough to see before. The little bees use their arms to softly pluck the flower off the stem and the pink-purple petals fall to the ground beside me. I am in awe, mystified by the magic of nature. 

I am grateful to be wrapped up in these thoughts, grateful to have the time to think and watch, and slowly, thoughtfully, carefully remove oregano leaves from an oregano plant. The truth is, the oregano plant should have been harvested much earlier. Once a plant goes to flower, as the oregano has done, the leaves loose much of the intensity of their flavor.  But if I hadn't let them get too old, what would the bees pollinate with? 

For a long time I missed him in the morning most fervently. Losing him, but for him to be alive, only a text away, despite the 3,000 miles and the arbitrary divorce of our togetherness, was the thing first on my mind and heavy on my heart. I don't doubt this is how most people feel during a breakup, but I have never felt more dramatic, more at the whim of the wind. The sky could glow just in the right way, sun low and golden against the rich grey blue, green pine trees cast in the light, and my heart would split open with feeling. The slightest thing would send me, transport me, to a feeling of complete and utter hopeless desire. I would replay his last spoken words to me, watch live photos of him on Facetime, worship the WhatsApp messages we had shared, the countless messages from him saying 'I love you,' and 'you're my best friend,' and the many happy pictures we have of us together. I would stare at my phone, check it religiously, and when his name and photo ID never blipped up as an outstretched hand, an outstretched heart, I would go for a walk. 

Just behind my place of work is a long stretch of undeveloped meadow, muskeg, and the start of a forest. Low brush, tall grass, berry bushes, and the start of a spruce and cottonwood forest runs wild. The owners of the property plan to never touch it, plan to leave it for the moose, bears, porcupine, and twenty-two year old girls to wander. I found a small clearing with a big, wild looking, bare bush growing in all directions. It reminded me of the story of Moses and the 10 Commandments, it looked to me like the burning bush of which god should speak from. It was big, but only barely taller than me, and had many branches with no leaves intertwining each other. It felt approachable, but out of place. I would sit down in that small clearing, sobbing over my heartbreak, sobbing over my broken life, and search for answers. I can always hope the bush will respond.