The Heart's Garden

• Monique Beauchamp, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2020

You could always find me tending to the garden. I fostered sunflowers of joy, I planted seeds of gratitude and watered daisies of hope. I ensured that the stems that held petals of love were not thorned with jealousy and pulled out the weeds of negativity. I swatted away the bugs that would find nourishment from devouring my happiness. I was taught how to garden all of my emotions, tending to my heart, yet I knew other people did not.

I could see neglected gardens everywhere. Too many people locked themselves in their houses, trying to ignore the ugly vines that knocked at their windows. I passed by so many of these people, but none more so than this one girl. Every time I passed her, glancing into her eyes, I could hear her garden pleading for care through the silence, her eyes disobeying her stone face and crying out for someone to see.

Her garden was not one of light. It was a place where the most hideous of emotions sprouted. Where the soil was waiting to devour those who walked through it, planting flaws of everyone she met by the row. I pitied this girl because I knew. Her garden was built from years of chiding, hearing judgemental and negative comments until a dark cloud appeared and forever shrouded the warmth of the sun. Someone had walked through the white picket fence and not trod lightly on the soil. People pulled at the flowers that had once been in perfect rows, until the soil was upturned, and left nothing but weeds for her to tend to. Since then, her garden had become so overgrown that she doesn’t know where to start working, her only hope if other gardeners' hands come to her aid and help her untangle the vines, so rooted into the soil.

No matter how it appeared, her heart was still a garden, with years of neglect hiding all of the flowers. Her garden yearned to be tended to, her heart yearning to be loved. Her heart was ashamed of its cruelty. It hated when it planted words of harshness into her mouth, finding other’s flaws and compelling them to plant their flaws like seeds into their gardens. Her heart only hoped that if other’s grew pessimism too, then maybe it would be able to hide the multitude of weeds that pervaded the soil. It couldn’t stand witnessing someone’s golden garden of beauty when it knew that it was nothing more than a dark web of tangled vines.

Every time I walk past this girl, I try to greet her with a smile. No matter how people glare at me, I always try to smile. I thought that maybe, just maybe, if I shower people like this girl with smiles and gratitude, then maybe their flowers would be able to grow just a little bit taller, and maybe they would feel the warmth of the kind sun, if only for one moment.