It's a heat wave. I thought you had gone away. But the score is half scribbled down . . . You could saw me in half if you're a magician, but likely both sides of me would groan from the ground, half matted with blood. I would fall there– my ears buried in wattles, my feet pointed in snow, my hands clenching my old Journal where I wrote in Latin. And when they would unclench and it would fall to the ground, it would lie there unbroken. Each word, lifeless, until the next swallow sang. Shrill notes to waken the dead, perched on each crest of sill. They clutch with their small bird claws, grey bird feet. They sit there and twitter ever so lightly of sun and warmth and all nature holds dear.
Half matted with death, I would turn lifeless with cold, and shivering renounce all my earthly stones for the gems of one crown. My amethyst prophesies would all glimmer like a sea of words, where I was bathed in salt and thought relentlessly, waves crashing violently to shore, driftwood stoic, as children made nests and forts amid the wreckage of my futility.
I was one to bring hope, one to heal the ivory fragments, the dismembered purple mind, the feverish red rant, the darkened navy eyes, with a sensitivity to touch and silk greenness no one could emulate. Often called upon as an acacia sweeping the African sky: ambient "mimosa". All who said my name made me recoil, shrink back in absolutes. There was no wind, nor could there be. There was no wind!
I ordered a hundred mimosa seeds for five dollars. The mimosa plants are en route, and I shall harvest them, and I shall dry them, and I shall pour boiling water over them and make tea. Have half a cup with me, my mother? Would you like some cream?
Some dried petals, and a little beeswax, an angel must have dwelled in you while only a shell or I would not have risen into buttercup glory. The trees bow their boughs, the line of evergreens blows back and forth over the garden, an owl hovering. The moonlight falls gently on a stalk or a vine, a seedling or an herb, a berry or a rounded cherry tomato. My stars are seeking reception in the constellation-ordered darkness. Their ethereal realms are too far to touch unless you are truly alone and stand on tiptoe. Their minute light swims in the goat milk galaxy, where women are wholesome, brush their hair from their eyes, and harvest the bounty of the lives around them before it rots on the vine.
In good time! Let's commence now– juice and wine, bread and lentils, chives and onions. The stew pot is full and we have room for cherished guests around the table.
I'll cut the bread. Here is the butter. The vase is full of rose blossoms, falling on the tapestried runner like snow.
The wineglasses are filled with iced wine, and we are once again giving birth, in pre-contemplation of a future child.
"A child with a name?" you ask. Yes, and her name is Della, named after you.
When summer takes hold of the mind, our blooms open and fall in tandem with the rose and mimosa. But we are rigid with turgor, our thorns are proud to keep others away. Lest they be pierced as Christ was pierced in reaching for heaven.
Yet a ray of light would fall on this old wood table and illumine for me why we transgress and trespass– and fly away before we are discerned. We are too afraid to reach for heaven in the darkest moment of our humanity. For then we would see the redemption. We would break it and eat it as something we are dependent on to be one with everyone else in need of a Saviour.
Letter from Emily Isaacson to her mother (Della) on Mother's Day 2023.
Mimosa Tree
–Photo from https://thehorticult.com/have-another-mimosa-the-blooming-of-a-controversial-southern-belle/
