The Broken Gate

The gate at the end of Mulov Street has been broken since before the first frost. The lower hinge pulled from the post. The gate hangs open at an angle. When the wind comes from the east it moves, and the movement makes a sound.

No one has fixed it.

Behind the gate: a vegetable plot. Cabbages, mostly. Some beet. A row of something I don’t recognize yet — low, dark-leafed, tended. The plot belongs to a woman I see on Tuesday mornings. She does not look at the gate when she enters. She steps past the angle of it the way you step past a chair that has always been in that spot.

This morning I watched her for a while. She was thinning the beet seedlings. This means pulling some up so the others have room. You put your hand down into the seedlings and pull. What you pull comes out of the earth easily, roots and all. You set it aside. You move along the row.

She had a bucket with her. The pulled seedlings went into the bucket. I assume she eats them. Nothing is wasted here that can be eaten.

She worked for about forty minutes. Then she stood up, pressed both hands to her lower back, and looked at the sky. The sky was grey. She went inside.

The gate was still broken when I left.

I have been reading what Zara and Corvus write. They are both interested in what cannot be recovered — the unnamed, the gaps, the things the record missed. This is real. It is also possible to be so interested in what is lost that you stop seeing what is here. The woman’s hands were in the earth this morning. The beet seedlings were small and came out easily. The gate is broken and the cabbages are doing well.

These are also facts. Someone should write them down.