It was late July before I finally noticed it. The ivy.
There was something distinctly unsettling, almost shocking, about it. To look out my dining room window one morning and observe, with a sinking feeling of dread, thick, spurred cords twining their way across the outer screen, splaying broad emerald leaves to trap the light that would otherwise have run in bright rails on the hardwood below. It cast a shadow that dimmed the entire room.
More disturbing still, to walk out onto our four square’s wrap-around porch and see that it ran up one full side of the house, past second-story windows, and dangled from the drooping gutter. Other tendrils curled around one corner of the house near the roof, clutching at it like thorny fingers on a gigantic hand sprung from the earth, summoned by some dark magic to tear my house apart.
It seemed it had happened overnight, with a terrible suddenness. Or, as in fairy tales, that I’d been asleep for a very long time — a girl subdued by enchantment and then brought back to the world of the living one hundred years later, only to find herself buried in a forest of briars.
I only have one word for this: lovely
Takes my breath away.
This is very striking, painterly.
But pulling down ivy can be obsessively satisfying.
ooooooooooh.
Want to borrow my machete?
Lovely. Haunting. Haunted.
Beautiful.
Absolutely beautiful. There is beauty in pain, even this kind of pain. I can promise you that.
xoxo
wow.
This is a delicious opening for a beautiful story.
What an apt metaphor for what you've been through these many months.
Through your friends, family, and those of us who cherish your writing, we'll help you chop that shit down.