I prick my finger each time I try to pause and sniff what is beautiful in the perfect world, where everyone has a two-car garage and plastic seat covers and drive to places most people in my neck of the woods would walk to. Only unlucky workers walk, the maids from the bus stop side by side with the nannies. Men come in pickup trucks trailing trailers full of garden equipment, leaf blowers where a generation ago they were forced to use rakes, piling up the remnants from the previous fall so they can no longer burn, as laws prohibit them from filling the air with fumes we used to love smelling as kids, now instead of piles of leaves, we get big orange bags.
Gardeners plant rose bushes or fill trellises for grapes,
men with gnarled and bloody fingers, gloves unable to hold back the bite of
thorns, or is it the sticky touch of the rose they resist, not even
appreciating the scent, as if sweat mingling with it all ruins even that for
men and women who labor their lives to maintain the houses with fancy lawns and
picket fences, roses that in any other time or place would smell so sweet.
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