Fall 2020 | Observing the absence of places I was once familiar with is not quite nostalgic. It’s more like my own little secret. I am part of that slice of history. Like seeing a building I had class in being torn down to make room for something shiny, new. Those who come after me will never know how the old building stood, smelled, sank.

Or the cabin at the end of the dead end street I lived a lot of my childhood on. The cabin is cobwebbed and alone, but I remember the house that accompanied it. I helped rescue the elderly husband and wife that lived there from a flood when I was in middle school. The people there now will never know like I knew.

The soil that cultivated me hosts a new community of plants. My roots do not exist. Not in the way they did when I was growing there. Recording them produced feelings of grief and longing for what once was, and comfort in having made it this far. I exist amongst the infusion of gardens I’ve grown into and out of.