GARDEN
- Mar 14
- 1 min read
By Dom Armstrong
I return to my garden,
expecting roses,
and a neat order of beds,
Life.
Instead:
a massacre.
Death.
The tulips are snapped like broken necks.
The hedges scalped.
The sunflowers look like they’ve been interrogated,
their petals confessing to crimes
they did not commit.
The pond is gone, too.
Not drained, but beaten.
Smashed flat with a brick
as though someone thought water
was showing off.
The grass is no longer grass.
It is a green smear.
Even the soil is wrong.
It smells cooked,
as if someone thought
fertility was an insult
that had to be burned out.
And yet, I recognise the vandal.
Same boots.
Same appetite for sabotage.
Who else would uproot what they planted,
laughing at their own wreckage?
It’s always me.
The gardener and the arsonist.
The worshipper and the executioner.
The one who builds altars
and then pisses on the stones.
I came here for solace.
Instead, I found honesty.
Nothing blooms in my care.
It only dies more
beautifully broken
than it ever lived.
Yes, it was a garden once.
Now it’s a mirror.