I am sitting on this splintered bench and the wood is digging into my thighs through my thin leggings and the sun is just too much, it is too loud for a Tuesday morning and the dirt smells like iron and rot and things trying to live when they should just stay buried but I’m holding this mug like it’s a lifeline or a heavy stone and I can hear the birds screaming in the trees and I just want them to stop, I want them to stop. I reach into my canvas bag and my fingers find the cold silver of the flask and it feels smooth and honest and I pour the spiced rum into my coffee and the smell of it is sharp and sweet and it cuts right through the smell of the damp earth and the lavender and the bullshit Susan is talking about. Susan is over there by the compost bin and she is wearing those expensive leggings that cost more than my weekly grocery budget and she is talking about her morning yoga and her deep breathing and how her spirit feels light as a feather but my spirit feels like a bucket of wet cement and I just watch the dark liquid swirl in my cup and I wonder if she ever feels like she’s drowning in the middle of a parking lot. I take a sip and the burn goes down my throat and it’s the only thing that’s warm in a good way and I listen to Linda talk about her meditation app and how she found her center at 5am but I was awake at 5am too and I was just staring at the water stain on my ceiling and thinking about the car insurance and the rent and the way my bank account looks like a graveyard. I spent fifteen years in those classrooms and I gave them every bit of my voice and my nerves until there was nothing left but a hollow shell and they call it retirement because it sounds better than a collapse but I’m only forty-two and I’m sitting in a garden with women who have soft hands while my hands are shaking, they are shaking every single morning, every morning. I used to think I was special because I could handle the kids and the noise and the red tape but now I’m just a woman with a flask in a garden and I’m watching the worms crawl through the mud and I feel more like the worms than the butterflies and it doesn’t even hurt, it just feels heavy and flat and grey. The coffee is lukewarm now but the rum makes it go down easy and I can hear them laughing about some new tea that’s supposed to clean out your insides and I want to tell them that nothing cleans you out like the way a paycheck disappears before you even touch the money but I just nod and smile and my face feels like a mask made of dry clay. I keep pouring just a little bit more, just a little more, and the bottle clinks against the ceramic and it’s a tiny sound but it sounds like a bell in my ears and I wonder if they can see it or if they are too busy looking at their own reflections in their filtered water bottles. I look at the tomatoes and they are heavy on the vine and some of them are split open and leaking juice into the dirt and the flies are landing on them and they are just eating until they can’t fly and I think that’s a decent way to go, just eating until you’re too heavy to move and the sun just bakes you into the ground. Every single day I come here and every single day I do this little dance where I pretend I’m interested in the heirloom carrots and the organic mulch but I’m really just waiting for the moment when the world stops feeling so sharp and jagged and the rum starts to blur the edges of the trees and the voices. Linda is asking me about my garden plot and I tell her the weeds are winning and she laughs because she thinks it’s a metaphor or a joke but it’s just the truth and the weeds have deep roots and they are choking out the marigolds and I’m just standing there watching it happen because I don't have the strength to pull them up. My mother worked until her knees gave out and she died with a list of things she still owed and I can see myself becoming that same list, a list of debts and regrets and empty bottles hidden in the back of the pantry and it’s like an inheritance I never signed for but I’m wearing it like a heavy coat. The sun gets higher and the sweat is starting to itch under my arms and I can feel the alcohol hitting my blood and it’s a slow, dull throb behind my eyes and finally the screaming in my head starts to turn into a hum and I can breathe without it feeling like I’m swallowing glass. I don’t know when I became this person who needs a drink to look at a flower but here I am and the garden is green and lush and everyone is talking about being present and being whole but I’m just trying to be invisible and I’m succeeding, I’m succeeding so well. I finish the mug and the dregs are bitter and grainy and I stand up and my legs feel like they belong to someone else but I just keep smiling and I tell them I have errands to run even though my only errand is to go home and sit in the dark until the sun goes down again. I walk to my rusted-out sedan and the heat inside the car is like a physical weight and I sit there for a minute and I just look at my hands on the steering wheel and they look old, they look so old and tired and the skin is dry and there’s dirt under my nails that won’t come out no matter how hard I scrub. I turn the key and the engine coughs and I think about Susan and her yoga and her light spirit and I just feel this immense, cold emptiness where my heart used to be and it’s okay, it’s fine, because tomorrow I’ll come back and I’ll do it all again. Every day, every day, until the weeds take everything and there’s nothing left to hide and the garden just turns back into a patch of dirt by the side of the road.