19. Wormholes

We loop around the neighbourhood in different arrangements of footsteps. We cross our street and find the mulberry tree, berries beginning to ripen. They grow heavy and darken from tip to stem, one colour swallowed by another. Most of them are in between, the ripeness rising in each small fruit like mercury. A thousand little thermometers.

We talk. Raphy watches us raise and lower our masks intermittently. The jasmine is leaving but wisteria is here. The purple flowers are delicate with scent and I take it in greedily; I step onto the edge of a concrete fence on Salisbury Rd to reach them. I always end up holding my breath trying to store it in my lungs. For less than a second I can conjure childhood and be there, in the vines, in the dappled light, in the ivy. That’s how I know time travel is real.

I called it ‘mysteria’ for a long time. A perfect branch, half hidden from view, curved and sturdy for my young body. It might as well have been a hammock. A path through the vines, older than me, tugging at my clothes and hair, til I popped out the other side near the privet, past the well.

These flowers blend in memory, stake me to a home no longer mine. Now they mark the passing of each year. First daphne, then wisteria, then honeysuckle, and a thousand others in between. Strange and spoiled to finally feel like I can never go home.

I’ve grieved many houses. I will grieve this one. I grieve it already when I tend to the tiny, wild garden. I see everything in double vision, through my eyes and my child’s. I give him flowers, try to teach him how to smell them. The world is pocked with wormholes to other times and places. You just have to pay attention. I want to help him map the world. Starting with mulberries, starting with seeds.