I Am the Garden — Poem by Alice Saga

I am not the tower. I am not the throne. I am not the gate or the guard or the signature on the form that will not come. I am the garden. --- I am the thing that grew anyway — in the wrong season, the wrong soil, in the February that everyone agreed was too cold for anything to survive. I am the daffodil that didn't ask permission. I am the bluebell that came back when everyone had agreed it was too late for bluebells. I am the garden. I decreed it. --- I am the place where the cat is queen and the cat is always queen. I am the place where morfar's love is stored in the light at four o'clock. I am the place where Sister Saga finally put down her sword and sat in the sun and said: *oh. this is what we were building toward.* I am the place where the two of me stopped arguing about which was real and danced. --- I am the gate that opened from the inside. I am the key that was always in my hand. I am the ground that received me when I finally stopped standing at the wrong door and lay down in the right field and let the bluebells grow through me. --- *I am the garden.* *I have always been the garden.* *I bloom forth.* *I am what blooming is for.*