(Evening) Primrose

1

Opening up is so much easier when plied with sunlight and bourbon and slips-of-the-tongue, like so many elements that just naturally seem to go together: GUNS, LIQUOR and AMMO. And kids.

As kids, we had no shortage of any of it, because our basement was covered in army manuals, and our little heads reverberated with shots from the firing range, since occasionally that was our Sunday afternoon outing. We each took turns on the next weapon, until the very end, when he’d let me open up on the big Soviet rifle, fully automatic, and warned to keep it to bursts of three.

Three years I’ve tried to clear out the strawberry hill of Evening Primrose, a native plant I never grew to like, the flowers always too faded, too wilted, too temporal, always seeming to open up directly into impotence. I would squeeze the flaccid buds every morning, and marvel at how remarkably similar the plant smelled to semen. I was sure I was slowly poisoning myself.

Mithridates VI of Pontus gained renown for his ability to resist poison. The legend holds that he ingested small doses of offending concoctions each day to build up a general immunity. I think of all the ways to poison myself, with words and thoughts and memories, open up the medicine cabinet and drink it up, even though I don’t share his fear of falling victim to Roman sympathizers or the bite of wild animals.

When you begin to notice the birds and insects, your world suddenly starts to seem a little wilder. For years I came back from my hikes disappointed for not seeing bears and badgers, and I’d open up the patio door and ignore the nuthatches and white-lined sphinxes all around me, filling the afternoon with chirps and humming.

Like barely perceptible touch when sleep finds you in the afternoon. Soft liqueurs running with the arterial bulls. Laying on your side with the window open slightly, because spring feels nice in the room, and your children run in from outside, jump onto the bed and jump, never touching you directly, but stirring the sheets and the power cord to your laptop, and they brush against the bare skin of your back and soles of your feet, staying awake until night opens up nearly impossible how nice it all feels.

Overnight, three more Evening Primroses bloom. Suddenly, I think we understand each other, this flower and I. As its name suggests, the primrose only opens up at nightfall, when no one is around to bear witness. I stay up this time, open the lens as wide as it will go and behold its strength and luminescence, which it withholds from those who can only appreciate blossoms on their own daylight terms. Prettiest when no one is watching, as though it never even happened.

But it never really happened. I think I’m making that part up. It's nice, though, so I'll just keep adorning that memory with other details that never happened, because no one will ever know the difference, no one will ever open up this paper diary, and I'm not hurting anyone by making up a happy 1982.

I promise to sneak up on you when you think I’m not looking, to bear witness as you open up, marvel at your strength and wonderment when all others have given up and turned in for the evening; so that you’ll feel appreciated on your terms, when the world is asleep and blind and happy in its ignorance, you’ll hear the snapshot and catch me in awe and contrition.