February 27, 2020:

Mysteries of the Mystical: A True Story.

I mailed her some Loosestrife leaves. I'd studied herbal magic for TriadCity, decided, well, Why the fuck not? It's silly but it's also sweet, and, who knows? Maybe she'll think of me differently.

She didn't. She rejected my overture. "No reconciliation for you!" Says the Put-My-Past-Behind-Me Nazi.

The Loosestrife plant promptly died.

I left it there, dead. On top of a stereo speaker where I'd see it every day. A symbol: of loss, of futility. A receptacle of sorts: the dead representation of my hurt and loneliness.

More than two years later it shot up a shoot. Astonishing, because, it had received no water or sunlight in all that time. Lazarus plant, returned from the dead.

Then, she contacted me. We reconciled for a time. At first it was a honeymoon, but then it wasn't. There was a change, without warning from my POV. To my astonishment the plant turned dry, began to wilt. Like a weathervane of our relationship, warning of storms. After a series of disasters when I returned home without her it had died in my absence, this time definitively. As had my interest in our reconciliation.

Did I make this up?

Not a word.
Really.