The Glasshouse

By Kruthi Mangamur Thiyagarajan

It has been a strange kind of tending,

this garden kept under glass.

A place meant for growth,

but mostly observed, untouched,

the soil hanging fire.

With one, there was a tracing of

fragile buds, a shared understanding of

breaking something delicate.

Talk of beauty,

but never disturbing the earth.

A shared, quiet looking,

tinges of flames coming through.

With another, a demand for harvest

from a garden barely planted.

No thought for the season,

only for what should be grown.

An impatient pointing from the path,

wanting the flower,

not the slow, quiet process of its

growth.

Then, this place.

This new, strange ground.

A stepping onto the soft grass,

as if one knew the worn-down stone

by heart.

The whole, walled-in garden

seemed to breathe out,

a sigh it had held for years.

In a short time,

so much ground has been cleared,

the lost sundial found,

the old stone bench sat upon

as if it belonged.

This is not a visit.

This is the rain.

This is the native soil.

The spinning, frantic heart just

settled.

It knows these roots.

It knows this ground.

There is just one place

kept locked.

The old glasshouse,

tucked behind the weeping willow,

its panes fogged with disuse.

holding a banked heat.

at the hands of the pressure from the flame.

The moment stands at the door,

its hand on the tarnished brass,

waiting.

Never forcing.

Just

present.

And the patience of it

is what breaks this.

There is a want to open it.

That is the nursery.

The whole point of the glasshouse

is propagation.

It’s the place built for tiny, hopeful sprouts,

for starting new life.

A dream of being in there,

quiet,

hands in the same ember-warm

dark earth,

coaxing a future from a pip.

A want to give this place

that sheltered, sacred potential,

the kind of life that grows.

A need

to let the flame devour things

that led to glass welded shut.

But there is such a fear

of what will be seen

when the door swings open.

The glass is cracked.

The light inside is honest,

and unforgiving.

It doesn't show the blossoms;

it shows the

bare,

vulnerable plots, the tangled roots, the imperfect,

unplanted beds,the florets that ne’er dream of being plucked

and instead

disguise themselves as dregs.

The parts kept hidden,

the parts always told

they were barren,

or broken.

There is a love for the open air, the easy lawn.

But to be let into this fragile,

transparent place;

a terror;

that the flaws, once seen,

are not just in the glass,

but in the ground itself.

That the soil is

all ash, too damaged

to ever grow

anything worth keeping.

And so, a hand trembles over the key,

paralyzed;

wanting to offer the whole garden,

and afraid of having

nothing

worth planting.

Kruthi is a McConnell Scholar at the University of Louisville in the class of 2029. She is studying bioengineering, political science, and linguistics.