Purple Grass & Dried Honey

His name sat on my lips like dried honey, sliding across the dinner table with ease. My friends took slow breaths in and out, patience lingering in the doorframe - not for me, but for him. He was always promising something, never following through. The story never changed, and neither did the salt that drenched my cheeks. It left swollen eyelids and flushed skin that said more across the tablecloth than my words ever could. “I’m fine” was never a big enough bandage to cover what they already knew.

They understood, just as much as anyone who stepped inside my orbit, that I loved him. For reasons that never came easy, he was a weak point in my otherwise strong cadence. It was a love buried deep in my core, an unexplainable tether, a quiet certainty that in another life, he was mine and I was his. That was the tragedy of it; the same certainty that told me we belonged somewhere else was the same one that told me it would never be here. So I would toss something out to soften the tension, to remind my girls I wasn’t naive. I’d say, “He’ll be better when the grass grows purple!”

You can lay with the grass, talk to it, cry to it, beg it to be something it’s not. You can even paint the blades violet, wish on every passing star, and bargain with a God on bleeding knees whispering “please, be purple.” But when the rain falls and the sun returns, it will still sprout green and you will still be disappointed, standing there with lime-stained white soles. There is simply nothing you can do to change something down to its root.

We’d always laugh, us girls, because it felt universal - asking a man you love to be someone you know he is not. It was a 98 when I needed a 100, a decimal in the wrong place, a comma mistaken for a period. It was a minuscule error that carried all the weight. I could feel the success of it, touch it, see it, taste it, but I could never fully have it, because it was never truly mine to have. So, I suffocated in acceptance, standing in a field of green. Love is cruel that way; it keeps you in places you know you shouldn’t be because your roots have already intertwined with someone else’s.

Inevitably, between “I love you’s” and “I miss you’s” and the kind of blurry stares that say more than words ever could, our roots tangled. Knotted, even. My eyes desperately searched for a hint of purple breaking through the surface. I tirelessly searched until I touched every corner and every blade. I ran until I had no breath left inside of my lungs but no purple was ever found. Somewhere deep inside of me, I knew I would never find it. I knew I’d walk down an aisle one day toward a face that wasn’t his and feel the faint pull of something that once held me in place. I knew, every now and then, I’d dream of the way he said my name and wake up warm. I knew that when the dinner table fell quiet, I’d bite my tongue until my mouth filled with metal, because how many times can someone say “I miss him so much” before it loses meaning? And I knew I’d always resent the color purple.

Here’s the thing: the truth was always loud, even when I wasn’t. My girls knew that they would be silently picking me up off of the drenched field while I drowned in my, far too small, ivory gown. They knew there was to be zero purple in my wedding decorations. He knew, too. He knew I loved him and that I missed him. Even when I didn’t say it. Even when I accepted that I deserved more. Even when I was moving on. Even when my roots tangled with someone new. Even when I promised to have left him in chapter 11.

Maybe, if I’m lucky, or unlucky, my body will forget what it felt like to be loved by him. Maybe one day, when the wind shifts and the ground settles, I won’t feel the pull at all but just the quiet knowing that it was real. Maybe my mouth won’t beg to speak of him and my mind won’t kill me to think of him. Maybe my eyes will stop searching for lavender, my lips will stop tasting sweet, and I won’t wait for him on my doorstep in grass-covered shoes.

But maybe not. Maybe this is exactly the way it’ll remain.

For now, until a day I can’t conceptualize or believe in, he crusts at the edges of my mouth. He tastes sweet and feels impossible to get rid of. He steals the air from a room when his name slips out without warning. He remains a good memory and a painful one. He leaves me in an empty field of newly burnt grass. So, in case my body ever forgets, a fear I wouldn’t wish on anyone, I write. I write of honey and weeds, of roots and knots, of souls and love, of blood and losing, hopelessly trying to make sense of him, of me, and of us.

Though I know better than to stretch my heart in directions it was never meant to bend, I also know this:

In another life

I wouldn’t need to search for him.

In another life

I would pass him in a field of lavender.

I’d lose sight of my balance,

and he’d catch me.

In another life,

he would be

like honey warming on my tongue,

like something familiar beneath my feet,

like a ground that was never meant to be purple,

but somehow,

impossibly,

would be.

In another life,

I’d have him, and he would have me,

the grass would grow violet,

and the honey would never dry.