What I Would Like to Grow in My Garden By Katherine Riegel
Peonies, heavy and pink as ’80s bridesmaid dresses and scented just the same. Sweet pea, because I like clashing smells and the car I drove in college was named that: a pea-green Datsun with a tendency to backfire.
Sugar snap peas, which I might as well call memory bites for how they taste like being fourteen and still mourning the horse farm I had been uprooted from at ten. Also: sage, mint, and thyme—the clocks of summer—and watermelon and blue lobelia.
Lavender for the bees and because I hate all fake lavender smells. Tomatoes to cut and place on toasted bread for BLTs, with or without the b and the l. I’d like, too, to plant the sweet alyssum that smells like honey and peace, and for it to bloom even when it’s hot,
and also lilies, so I have something left to look at when the rabbits come. They always come. They are always hungry. And I think I am done protecting one sweet thing from another.
