Fixer-Upper by Angie Crea O'Neal

“Why do the wrong things grow here,” I spit, prying weeds elbow-high from the flower bed out front, the one next to the bald spots in the grass, thanks to last year’s drought. I’m a Pharisee imposing order, tucking, smoothing the corners. But it looks more like a brothel at my feet.

Was it Blake who said the road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom? Maybe I’ll let those tufts of chickweed alone, wild toupees littering my lawn. Pluck the morning from its crabapple stem instead, pillage a quorum of native daisies. Buttercup blossoms will be my yellow road, my primrose path of indiscretion. I’ll boil bitterroot like a prophet, leave the day unmade as tousled covers. Blow dandelion seeds to tell time.

I’ll watch my work rise like hot air rendering thunder, ditches turning into rivers, rivers becoming law. See how it all goes to hell anyway? Even the riverbank’s high ground, breaking way. Nothing’s sacred. Not our bodies, just annuals, just tempests for a time.

That jungle is the only thing here that will last. See it prune me back to wonder? Just now the pale madwort greens the rock and crevice, saplings sprout like circus wishes in impossible places while ivy juts its tendrils through my window frame. It’s futile to match their wits.

I’ll sit here under its bramble, a roof blooming of blackberry. Braid white clover into crowns. See the neighbors stare, pointing like green thumbs from atop their emerald lawns? They are wrecked by beauty.

Angie Crea O’Neal’s work has appeared in Sycamore Review, The Christian Century, The Windhover, Cumberland River Review, and elsewhere. She teaches English at Shorter University in Rome, Georgia, where she lives with her daughters.