Page 26 of Poet & Protector

He looked at me. “I’m calling it right now. We’re skipping the extra credit.”

“Agreed.” I could see the philosophy behind the assignment and how Ms. Castillo hoped it would help us find our own writing process. If I didn’t already have a fully developed process, I might enjoy it.

We had to cross the entire open space of the garden to reach the smaller walled-off section that held the reflecting pool and rose bushes. We walked in silence. Though the green bursts of spring and summer were long past, autumn painted the garden in flame-like hues of gold, orange, and red. The scent of rich, cooling earth and drying leaves was all around us.

When we reached our allotted site, Mason opened the gate.

“After you.”

I passed beneath a wrought-iron arch and into a small, tidy garden. Three neat rows of rose bushes ran along each side of a long, narrow reflecting pool that was the garden’s central feature. The rough-hewn stone walls surrounding the garden were about ten feet tall and framed the space in the same rectangular shape of the pool.

“I vote for efficiency,” Mason said, looking around the space. “Two most obvious objects: reflecting pool and rose bushes. We can worry about the third later.”

I nodded.

“Okay, pool.” Mason walked to the long rectangular pool at the center of the garden. Its mirror-like surface was perfectly still.

“It’s peaceful,” Mason said, pausing beside the pool. His eyes followed a leaf floating on the water. “Like everything has gone to sleep after summer. The leaf could be a dreamer and the water is the dream. That would be approaching through a metaphor, right?”

Huh. I was impressed. “Yes. You should write that down.”

He looked pointedly at the pen and notebook in my hands. I chuckled and made some notes.

“One down: reflecting pool and metaphor,” I told him. “What next?”

“Nope,” Mason said. “I did the first object. Now it’s your turn.”

I didn’t reply but turned and made my way to the rose bushes. Most of the leaves had been already stripped by autumn winds. Here and there a few rusted stragglers clung to dark, twisting, thorny branches.

I wandered beside the row of roseless bushes until I spotted a single bud. Desiccated and brown, only a hint of its original blushing shade remained. The rose had never opened, either having emerged too late to blossom or caught by an early frost, its potential lost to an icy doom. The bud remained an echo of what could have been.

When Mason came up to me, I pointed at the rosebud.

“Oh.” Mason crouched to peer at the flower. “Poor little rose. It’s all alone.”

“That’s kind of the idea I had,” I said, kneeling beside him. “Approaching though an emotion. Loneliness makes sense. This is a rose that never will be. It cannot escape its nascency. It remains trapped here, clinging to what might have been, abandoned by all the other roses who chased the sun.”

Mason was quiet for so long, I turned to frown at him.

“No wonder you write poems,” he said, sounding astonished.

I felt a tiny flutter in my chest.

No. No, I didn’t.

I stood up. “So, that works for you? Want me to write it down?”

“Humble much?” He laughed, rising. “Yes, Nev, you should write it down.”

While I wrote, he glanced around the rest of the garden. “Wanna see who can find the third object fastest?”

When I looked at him, he wore a puckish smile. There was so much eagerness in his face, I almost burst into laughter.

“You want to race for our assignment?”

“Why not?”

“Fine,” I sighed, but didn’t really mean it. “To make it fair we have to travel the same distance before we start searching.”