When a Garden Cries, a Perfect Garden is Stained

By Arisleny Benitez-Linarez & Samantha Isales Hernandez

We were sitting on the phone together trying to figure out what we could write about that felt close to both of our hearts. We decided to use nature to write about mental health.

Part 1

A perfect flower

covered in blood.

I once believed if I held that perfect flower. 

Any one small thing. 

It would light up my garden, allowing for more to grow. 

But a little flower, 

I have no more. 

It’s felt as though every single leaf, tree, and animal I’ve touched 

has become stained with the idea that nothing’s right. 

Slowly it seeps into my garden. 

Covering everything I love with anguish and anxiety. 

No flowers can grow in the soil so dry. 

Though you would’ve believed the tears from the waterfall would have moistened it. 

Transition from a believable almost perfect like state. 

To one where it feels like the literal ground has been pulled from under you. 

The constant loss of friends makes you feel despair and it seems as though nothing is right. 

Try and try as you might, everything only seems to get worse. 

Never had the garden looked so gloomy. 

And never had the girl been depressed by the garden. 

You see, the girl often lets many people into her garden so that they too can be happy. 

But people aren’t always nice and they litter and ruin the poor garden. 

The girl, always believing in other people first, had no idea how to banish them from the garden, and so they remained. 

Trashing the girl’s loveliest possessions with anger and hatred. 

The girl could only marvel at the mess they’d made. 

And as the poor garden was dying before now all that was left by the travelers was nothing more than sadness, depression, and self-hatred. 

See, hatred is contagious. 

Once someone tells you they hate you it’s hard not to tell yourself that. 

In front of a waterfall, the girl’s reflection looks back at her as tears begin to fall on skin that she once used to love. 

Even her skin crawls thinking of the vial words said. 

She needs to learn to defend herself. 

A boundary as tall as the waterfall will be put in place. 

Maybe that’ll keep the unruly settlers from tramping her garden ever again. 

For now the girl sits in her garden. 

Looking at the remains of things she’d once loved. 

The twirling leaves, showing the dances she once used to love.

She looked out into her garden.

Seeing how broken her own flowers and ground were.

She must do something.

She gets up and prays for water.

None comes.

She sits there,

praying for water,

but the soil remains dry.

She asks, “Why has the world forsaken me?”

At that time,

the waterfall became so loud the girl couldn’t ignore it anymore.

She went up to it.

“If you want a vibrant garden,

you have to keep it vibrant.

Love yourself enough,

to keep it safe for you.”

Part 2

In came the intruder.

The one that stole the flowers that I so delicately planted.

I stood up all night practicing my techniques 

to that the tulips and the roses,

the sunflowers and the violets, all lasted

under the moon’s light, they very shortly lived.

Listen to me now, this was not the first time the intruder got its way.

A few days ago, it came and poured the water I worked all night to collect,

killing the tulips and the roses, the sunflowers and the violets.

See, it took lots of crying to collect that amount of tear-water. 

After watching gardens be exterminated around the world,

and particularly in the Middle East,

I could not sleep.

I stayed up all week collecting my tears.

I watched gardeners yell and demand for the exterminator to stop.

No one listened.

The long hours of crying filled my jar.

They say that if you pray under the moon, collect your tears and pour them over your garden, then maybe a miracle will go far.

I am angry, 

and sad,

and mad, 

and truly distraught.

The note on the jar read, “water-tears do not touch”.

And again the intruder went and poured it all.

If there is one thing I’d tell this intruder is that while I love sharing my tulips and violets, and roses and sunflowers, 

their actions have now killed my garden and the tear-water has dried up.

The pain of a dead garden will live deep in my heart.