The Vine

The Vine

I sit in the wooden chair flaking white, cooling my feet on the concrete wall to the side. In front of me, the grate of my balcony grates on me: or rather I should say the vine twisting around it insists on me watching its reaching. 

The vine grabs onto different poles; up, up until the first horizontal bar. There it has become confused–confused but not stagnant. It continues crawling until it finds a small upward spiral of support. (Could the bar represent my current situation?)

Here, all the paths from the vine's thin necks convene and overlap. They criss-cross around that call for up, a mass of hopes and needs. (Are they the same thing?)

Many heads have ventured outward, spreading along a visible timeline. Some have blossomed backwards, looking to the past for support. The most surprising are those heads growing out of the tangledness under them. They turn above the mess with their heads tilted upward. The ones stretching toward the future stare straight at me.

Knowing that I cannot remain in the midst of the mess indefinitely, I get up looking in the direction of the future buds.

Update: Since then, some heads in the future have totally blossomed into fruition, blooming into blue. They only last a couple of days however, the future quite fleeting. I'll look toward the future but concentrate on the growing to get there because the moment will fade but the growing will not.

Text and photo: Kristen Mastromarchi