You can’t really know color until you see gray
in all its variegated glory. Red roses
try forever to become blue and fail. But here
in my garden there are buds of chrysocolla.
Did you think I only turned men to shale or flint?
I have all the rocks at my disposal. I have
quartz to catch the light and jasper to taste like earth.
I call them my flowers because each one grew, each
reaches for the sun with no hope of getting there.

And because gardens never had to be of buds
or even greenery, even ferns. I have seen
gardens of spoons and steps and chairs. Lawns of faces
turning towards the light are just as delightful. Call
me gardener or not, I know, as my snakes give
water to these roots, I am a cultivator of art
and growth, and the capture of growth in these moments.

[Amelia Gorman lives in Eureka where she spends her free time exploring tidepools and redwoods with her dogs and foster dogs. Her fiction has appeared in Nightscript 6 and Cellar Door from Dark Peninsula Press. You can read some of her poetry in Vastarien, Utopia Science Fiction, and Strange Horizons. Her first chapbook, the Elgin-winning Field Guide to Invasive Species of Minnesota, is available from Interstellar Flight Press. Her microchapbook, The Worm Sonnets, is available from The Quarter Press.]