On the day Blossom met Tom, they went wandering through midtown.  They were both eager to talk, to share, to learn, yet scared too–nervous at any lull, quick to comment on the houses and the neighborhood:  gingerbread on a Victorian façade, sunflowers peeking over a fence in the alley.  They wound up in the community garden across from Fremont Park, a destination he’d wordlessly steered her toward.  He wanted to show her his plot filled with lemon verbena, basil, mint, dill, fennel.  It was so aromatic, she felt almost dizzy as he broke off a sprig of anise for her to nibble.  “Like licorice,” he said.

A man drifted by, an acquaintance of his, and Tom called him over, bid him show Blossom his tattoo.  The man lifted his sleeve to proudly reveal a male deer with tremendously large antlers sprouting in an impossible circular pattern, as if the animal were carrying a planet on its head.  Tiny birds and butterflies hovered around the deer, flying near his long neck and sturdy shoulders, but all creatures angled upward toward the mythic antlers.

It was beautiful of course, and Blossom thanked him for sharing it, but she was happy when the stranger listed away toward his own patch of ground.  She wanted to be alone with Tom.  She was mesmerized by him, and she understood in a way she never had before that this would be the first of many days, many years perhaps—and she was right.  Tom was like a bird that day, spreading his feathers for her, displaying his garden, and even his favorite art, which happened to be on the arm of another man.

It was all meaningful, though Blossom would not realize this until later.  They were both young.  Much still needed to happen.  They had not prayed together on the morning of 9/11 yet.  They had not lived through a pandemic together.  Not yet.

But often through the years, Blossom would think of Tom’s garden.  There were no vegetables, no fiber, no beans or corn, no protein.  The herbs were lovely, prescient of a life that would always be flavorful, spicy, pungent even.  But it would not be enough to sate her appetite.  It would not nurture her.  For he was the sacred stag, who would lead her into the damp and fragrant woods, but then he would melt into the darkness and leave her to confront her shadow alone.  She learned to accept this as a blessing, albeit a lonely one.

You were not a helpful companion, she wrote in a letter he refused to read.  But you were an excellent muse.