Creeping Bellflower

There was a June in which my soul was asking me to know something I wasn’t ready to know and so I waged a tedious war against the creeping bellflower that crept the perimeter of our patio and each morning and afternoon I dug in the dirt for roots and the jackpot rhizomes, a skinny, pale, turnip-carrot-looking-thing, and I hooted with glee, gotcha little fucker, each time my fingers followed the shockingly white shoots and roots deep enough into the dark soil, past the earthworms and millipedes and even into my dreams where I dreamed of the rhizomes, wanting so desperately to peel them out of the ground, fingers groping through the earth and my brain lighting up each time I found one, until I overheard a whisper from the dirt or the creeping bellflower and the whisper said come close and do not stand or sit but fall here on the ground where your limbs have brought you and pinch between thumb and index finger a thin tangle of roots—a coaxing of the palest truth.

First appeared in Third Wednesday Journal: Spring 2020.