The Night Gardener (2)

The garden was watered today, by an unexpected thunderstorm. The leaves shook and fell, gathered near the gate. Rivulets of water carried them, swirling from the ground into the nearby pond. 

The flowers glistened and shone, their buds, orange and pink, grateful for the drops of water falling on their mouths, drinking the thirst away. The branches, like hair underwater, danced in the wind. It had been a while someone pulled at them to swing them around. The hot, parched bodies of fruits now lay in the muddy ground, cooled down. 

The gardener has been missing for a while. He has been sick lately. He feels guilty about not coming in every morning to check on his precious plants. His long fingers miss touching the soft petals of the roses, slowly unpeeling them, as the fragrance of their juices linger on his fingertips. He smells them to remind himself that he's been doing a good job. He is a diligent worker, and there's nothing that gives him more satisfaction than taking care of what fate has assigned to him. He considers the garden as a part of his soul, priding himself on being so skilled as its caretaker. 

At night, he digs his hands inside the wet ground to check on the soil. He is obsessed with ensuring that not even a single plant withers under his care. He would not want anyone else to touch his hard work. It's his, he has painstakingly made it blossom and bloom. 

When he sleeps, he thinks of taking the water hose to the trees. He must look after them too. They remind him of the legs of his lover. Sometimes he holds the tree trunk, finding himself under cottony, white sheets. How he loved caressing her legs and calves, kneading them with his hands till they relaxed enough to open up for him. He is skilled with his hands. But its his mind that is not at ease. 

He has been sick lately. Sick with desire and worry. He has left his lover behind, and he is afraid she might not wait for him. Before he sleeps, he checks the clock on the bedroom wall. It is very late in the night, that time when only the dogs howl in the dark. She must already be asleep by now. If only she was in his bed right now, but she isn't and he is throbbing away in fervent pain, the kind of pain that only a man is aware of. 

He thinks of her bare back, the one he could write poems about. Her mouth haunts him, her moist lips mock his morning dreams. He imagines entering her mouth, as if it were a tunnel in a snowstorm. His breath escapes in a sigh, as he clutches the bedsheet around him. The tunnel is warm and inviting, unlike the bed he sleeps in. The winter this year had been unusually harsh, without any relief in sight for months. Relief, still evades his mind as well as his body. 

Rubbing his twitching, tired fingers, he thinks of home. That place where the rivers flow down the slopes of the valley, like the thighs of his lover, dripping with wanting him, only wanting his fingers and mouth, and noone else's. He imagines diving into the waters, only his head visible to passer bys, a mop of black hair and eyes under the blue surface. In between, he looks up to see her, her eyes turned inwards. He is skilled at everything he does. When he makes his way home at last, she moans his name again and again. How he longs to hear her call his name, one more time, what would he not do to feel the blood gushing in his groin, just to have her smile at him once again! 

He wants to leave everything behind and run to her. But the garden needs tending too. What if someone else takes over it? He feels he will explode very soon. Something has to change somehow, but how? The days are beginning to seem like years. He is a young man, hot blood rising up with want and longing and dreams. But he will not always be young like this. Very soon, he will grow old, and his body will stop craving her flesh. But he doesn't want to grow old till he's sunk every inch of himself into her burning bones. 

Caught in an endless evening daze of holding back in and countless orgasms, he continues to feel sick. 

The thunderstorm subsides. The garden has been replenished for the time being by nature's fury, while the gardener continues lying in bed, worried sick that all his seeds have died. 

Tomorrow he will try to get back to work. Today, he must rest between dreaming and trying to wake up.