Greenhouse - Dream
I dreamed we'd found an old greenhouse.
Not one of those polished botanical gardens.
An enormous Victorian greenhouse with cracked glass panes and rust creeping over every iron beam. Half the roof was missing, yet somehow nothing inside had died.
Morning sunlight spilled through the broken ceiling.
Plants had reclaimed everything.
Ferns growing over abandoned desks.
Vines winding around old wooden chairs.
A fig tree pushing through the floor where someone had once laid neat black-and-white tiles.
The whole place felt less abandoned than... adopted by nature.
You immediately wandered off.
Of course.
I found you kneeling beside a tiny white flower growing from a crack in the stone.
You weren't photographing it.
You were simply looking.
I asked,
"What is it?"
You answered,
"I don't know."
I waited.
Then you smiled without taking your eyes off it.
"I don't think it minds."
...
Further inside stood an old workbench.
Covered in seed packets.
Most of them had faded blank.
Only one still had writing.
Someone had scribbled, years ago,
"Plant anyway."
You held it up.
"That's optimistic."
I shook my head.
"No."
"What then?"
"It's an instruction."
You laughed.
"You hear orders where I hear hope."
"I've spent fifteen years surrounded by orders."
That made you quiet.
Not awkward.
Just thoughtful.
...
Eventually we reached the very centre of the greenhouse.
There was a single enormous tree.
Far too large to fit inside.
Its branches had pushed through the roof decades earlier.
Sunlight poured around the trunk.
We sat beneath it with our coffees.
You rested your head against the bark.
I looked up through the shattered glass.
"So..." you asked "Do you think this place survived because someone looked after it?"
I watched a bird disappear through the broken roof.
"No."
"Then why?"
"Because eventually..." I looked around at everything growing where it shouldn't "...it stopped trying to become what it used to be."
You smiled.
That knowing smile again.
The one you've adopted lately in my dreams.
Not amused.
Certain.
You reached over and brushed a little dirt from my sleeve.
"I think people can do that too."
...
Then I woke, and the first thing I noticed was concrete. Then I could almost smell damp earth instead.