Special Issue #13 ISSN 1547-5957

darkness seemed to coalesce into strange new shapes. The night is surprising itself,
he thought.
By the time he reached the trees the dark shadows had shifted. He could hear
one shuffling behind him, pretending to be the wind in the branches. How could a
shadow shuffle? He thought he knew how.
Slowly he turned to face his mother’s shape, light from the kitchen windows
shining through her eyes. “I’m sorry,” he said, knowing he didn’t really mean it.
Her lips twitched as though worms lived inside them. “Don’t be,” said a voice
like the wind whistling through a hallowed bone. “I rot with the roots; I bloom
with the spring. I freeze in the winter; I shine in the summer. And so will you.”
Alan shifted awkwardly on the grass, wondering why he could hear tearing
sounds from all over the garden, as though multiple bodies erupted from the soil
and found new roots in rotted hearts.
“We’re all over this garden,” said his mother’s voice. Or rather voices, for the
sound came in chorus from all around him. White shadows shuffled in plant-like
formation. Mothers gathered themselves from the soil, brushing dirt from their
bones. “And so are you,” they said as one. All raised what had once been hands; but
only one, perhaps the original seed, struck down with the shovel and eclipsed all
shadow and light.
The seasons pass, the seasons grow. But anyone walking by the old house on
a cool spring night could not fail to notice the beautiful garden, the impeccable
lawn. Mothers and sons working through the twilight together. Digging, weeding,
seeding. Watching the garden grow.
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38 The Literary Hatchet