In the middle of The Bad Year
you gave me a dead Apricot tree
or so it seemed
a flimsy empty branch in a fancy planter
It seemed fitting
we didn’t know if we were growing or dying
together
When I left you, I had determined
among many things
that it was alive if not in bloom –
green skin under the brown.
I took it with me to my new home
and occasionally shrugged at it
When it bloomed the first year
it was almost infuriating
It had survived but we had not
and there was no peace between us
But this year it is blooming more fully –
many branches of a thickening truck,
and there is a careful friendship we hold
much of the sting having gone with time
The rabbis say t’shuva takes time
though there are instant versions
This certainly was not that
Neither quick, nor explicit
We have forgiven, mostly,
though in many ways we are still not agreed on who did what
to whom and when and why
and I don’t know if we’ve forgiven ourselves.
T’shuva is not complete
Not nearly
But we’ve perhaps come as far as we can
Next year the apricot will bloom in someone else’s garden
Neither of us will see it
But hopefully both of us will have found a more complete healing
A more complete peace