I P O M O E A
—
H
e can feel himself slipping. It’s all too easy — all too tempting — to give into that other world, the one of roots and vines and blossoms. The longer he stands there with his skin pressed to the earth, the more it calls to him. He can hear its song, when he closes his eyes and listens. He can feel it, echoing loudly in his bones, calling him, calling him — — calling him home.
There are no secrets in the vineyard tonight. Only longing, and memories, and an ache that runs deeper than blood and sap.
Some nights he lies awake listening to it. The melancholic cry of a loon, the knowing whisper the trees exchange with the wind, the restless rustling of the grasses and the flowers. It was on those nights that he could not sleep, that he wandered the garden or the forest reading the signs and sounds of the earth the way other men read books, all the while seeking in them an answer — or perhaps a meaning, a purpose, a name for that mysterious ache living in the roots of the meadow that called for him to come.
He presses tighter against the vines now, and in their slow-moving veins he feels it. But nature has a way of moving at its own pace, and no matter how he begged or cajoled or demanded — it would not be swayed. Not yet.
Not before the girl finds him, at least.
Ipomoea blinks his eyes like he’s coming awake and seeing the vineyard for the first time — and, in a way, he is. The girl stands before him young and curious and he — he feels as old as these vines, planted years, decades before his birth. He smiles at her, and despite the turning of his lips there is a sadness there, too.
“They are,” he says, pulling away from the leaves and the grapes. “Can’t you hear them?”
He motions for her to come closer, offering her his spot nestled against the trellis. And when she does he whispers to the grapes — not with words, but with his magic. It leeches out of him slowly, wrapping gently around the roots of the grapevine. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the fruits begin to swell and brighten.
“They’re saying eat me,” he whispers with a wink, only a moment before plucking a bunch from a nearby vine and popping several grapes into his mouth.
His laughter is soft, weaving as it does through the vines. “Go ahead, they’re as ripe now as they ever will be.”
you have dug your soul out of the dark
do not go back to what buried you
@maeve <3
