Note: A Garden Not Lost to Us has been reformatted from its original horizontal-scrolling layout to a vertical one in order to make it more accessible on mobile web browsers. In presentations such as our printed book and our exhibition at Scarlow's Gallery, the narrative is depicted in its original format.
She has been gone for three weeks now.
I remember warmer times, when everything we did together felt like a new discovery taking shape before our eyes.
Alone, my thoughts exist in a vacuum, where memory is free to reconstruct every painful landmark we passed on that path before the collapse.
Each scene is replayed with a cutting emphasis on new, burdensome knowledge and just how badly I dealt with it.
She has become the center of every meditation, but no bit of magic that I know can bring her back.
Even if she returned, how would I overcome all that has now tainted my image of her and so thoroughly infected every peaceful moment?
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. As I opened it, I found no visitor, but a single Polaroid tumbled to the floor. It was an old picture I had taken of her that had since become lost to me.
Last year, we had come across a large building in the woods, several miles from home. Long-abandoned, we could not guess its original purpose. Before we left, I snapped her picture as the winter sun was setting.