Kingdom

On my sixth day of Covid I venture

with tea, a notebook, and the last of the peaches

out back to our tiny plot tucked

in its city alley. I say our but this domain

is yours: you know which day which sungolds

will be ready, what needs pruning, what wildness is better

left unchecked, not to mention where the sugar water

won’t get too hot for the hummingbirds

and their purring hearts, how to stop the squirrels from biting

each green zebra just to spit out its tart flesh

before trying another, and which log to leave across the bottom

of the birdbath so it’s not too deep. I see feathers

floating, meaning something somewhere newly

is clean, glistening from wetness and not just the sheen

of being blessed with flight. Each breath

is lush, every smell at once. I feel starved,

the way one is for everything after realizing the worst

of a sickness is over, and I’m eating each peach

in four bites, gorging on their fullness and the fullness

of the sunlight and the oxygen

released by the honeysuckle overswarming its trellis,

by the bee balm, by the Norfolk pine we used once

as a Christmas tree, by Fred Jr., the cactus

you grew from three inches of Fred, by the banana peppers

you pick and leave in a bowl for me

to slice into my eggs, by the volunteer cilantro (volunteer,

a word I have thanks to you), by the rosebush

branch you guide away from the handrail,

by the dumbcane, by the magnolia

giving shade to the whole kingdom and me

drunk on it all, spilling over like the peach juice

down my chin, like the ink of this fountain

pen bleeding through this cheap paper, the other side

illegible now. You never like the poems

I write about you, but each time I believe

this will be the first. This will be the first.

Like me, everything wants in on what you’ve made:

crickets, two mice you’ve deemed siblings and named, caterpillars

who eat entire milkweeds in hours to build wings from,

and the winged shadows streaking across me, just sky

by the time I look up. Even the neighbor’s pawpaw tree

reaches through the fence, its shadow touching

the oxalis, the ponytail palm, the weeping blue ginger.

I knew so few of these names before you. Even those

I knew I couldn’t point to, and still I need you

to remind me. I need you to remind me

of so much. To not yell at the Sixers game

because the dog hides under the couch. To listen

to my knees when they hurt. To slow down. To give you time

alone. To remember early isn’t always better, which I forgot

that time I snapped at you to wash the basil already

forty minutes before hosting Maggie and Joe, whom you made laugh

all night and waited until after they left

to cry. To slow down. To leave bug bites be,

and because I never do, you planted citronella—

and yes, we’re back in the garden

because you’d rather be here than anywhere. Here,

with our failed attempt at broccoli

and the radishes we planted earlier

than last year when we planted them too late.

Here, with the rain garden we think

can probably handle the rain.