Kate looked up; more glared than looked, really. Scorn spilled from her aged, dull, blue-green eyes, up and through the smoke-hued, dense clouds. Her right knee ached, which meant there would be a storm that night. Not just a hard rain, no, she could not dare dream of such luck. It would be full-force rain that stung as it hit and the winds would howl (to let each thing so blessed with ears know that the gods were to spew clear drops down on the earth for what would feel like years). Of course this would take place now, here. Not that rains were rare, but the ones that seemed as if they were shot from a sky-gun and would belt and slash and freeze and crush the frail life they struck? Those came once or twice a year.
She knelt and stroked a pale bud that sat on top of a rose bush. Her blood pulsed in the roots that fed it- each step toward life brought hers back, piece by piece. It was the one thing raised by, and shared with, no one else but her. That plot of earth, lush with young plants, placed in the back-right patch of their not so grass-filled lawn had kept her sane for the last four months. Kate heard Dan call her back to the house; he said it was late, and that there was a storm. She hushed the urge that welled up from her throat to swear at him and called back, “Be there in five.”
Since John died in May, Kate had not said a phrase to Dan that was more than five words in length. Was he not to blame for all of this? When Dan fought, boys still came home. Things changed. It was far from the same war when John left, and she knew it. But, it was too late at that point – the boy had been brought up to think that real men fought, killed, and proved their strength in such a way. So he went. And that was it. Now here she was, in the same trap of self-hate. Her hands grew these plants; her whim brought them to life- these blooms, these leaves, and all when, deep down, she well knew that fierce rain would strike them down at some point. And so it goes, she thought. Then, in a voice too void of life to sound sad, said to no one but the grass, “God I need a drink” and went in through the side gate, filled with angst at the thought that she’d dream of John dressed in that brown-green, in worn boots, a dead rose in hand.
Etymology Sampler:
Grass - Old English græs meaning “herb, plant, grass"
Bloom – Old Norse blomi meaning, “flower, blossom”
Hand - Old English hond, hand, meaning "hand; side; power, control, possession"
Void – a late 13th century Anglo-Frisian word meaning, “unoccupied, vacant” and the Old Frisian voide meaning, “empty, vast, wide, hollow”
Swear – Old English swerian, meaning “take an oath”
Hate – Old English hatian meaning, “to hate”
Drop – Old English dropa meaning, “a drop of liquid”
Spew – Old English spewan meaning, “spew, spit”
Throat – Old English prote, implied in protbolla (Adam’s apple) literally “throat ball”
Brown – Old English “dark, dusky”
Sky – Old Norse sky meaning, “cloud”
