Under the potatoes

The garden, the only place I loved would be the last place I would ever be.

I kept digging. And digging. And digging.

When my dad got home from work, his sideways glance at me and the joking "you've dug youself a hole big enough for a dead body" made me even more depressed. You're not wrong, I thought as I looked into the hole again.

That night, I got out of bed, put on my garden gloves, and walked slowly out the back door and over to the garden trembling from the spring chill and the tears rolling down my cheeks.

I looked at the tree above the garden where I had rigged a contraption opposite of hunting traps that use netting. In the bag, I shovelled the dirt that will later fall on top of me.

I set my envolope in a bag on the other side of the garden. It sat on the potatoes in there and sneered up at me asking why I was still alive. I don't know my eyes whispered back.

Back at the hole, I sat down in the dirt remembering years ago how I used to come to the garden on the days my parents fought. The garden always comforted me as a safe-haven outside of the house that habored monsters. I thought about the days in spring when I planted potatoes, corn, pumpkins, and beans outside in the rain, getting sick while the two of them screamed at each other inside so loudly I could hear each word clear as day outside, but at least it was quieter out there. I thought about the snowy days in winter when I'd sit in a little snow fort on top of where the grean beans were planted in spring only so I couldn't see what was happening inside to make their bruises and cuts. I thought of the days when I raked leaves and harvested the potatoes, corn, pumpkins, and beans while they were at single meetings with therapists and later on their own filling out divorce papers. I thought about the humid summer days where I sat in between the rows of corn pretending to be in a quiet crowd of people where everyone knew me and loved me even though the only thing they could do was give me was comfort.

And comfort was enough. Then.

And I made my decision. Laying back, I tugged the rope, and I was under three feet of soil. Drowning myself in the earth that protected me.

No light. No air. No sun. No sky. No shouting. Just peaceful silence as I choked on death and cried my way from life.

In the spring, I thought as silently as the rest of me was dying, mamma will plant potatoes over me, and I will stay in my garden forever.