by Jackson Gambee
She taught me that in Naturopathic medicine They avoid palliative solutions to patient’s problems.
They instead approach illness and health holistically To find the root cause.
It reminded me of my dad making me pull weeds. In the summer, he’d say, “make sure to get the roots.”
My dad liked her when they met. She’s a sweet girl but doesn’t like to be assumed as such.
I didn’t really get that.
She thought it might have to do with being called prude. I’ll show them, she thought. I didn’t get that either.
But I was never going to hold it against her. I wanted To sleep with her flaws on my shoulder, numbing my hands, Something that would have kept me up in the past.
Maybe I was using her to pull out my own weeds. More than once I tried to cry in front of her.
I never actually did.
She’d rub my neck and rub her hands through the roots Of my hair that I wanted to rip out. We’d have palliative sex that wore us out enough To roll into sleep, stuck to each other. We’d have palliative conversations Followed by palliative solutions. We never got through the top soil Of our insecurities to expose the roots And instead we kept ripping up flowers and stems, Flowers and stems, flowers and stems, And I could hear my dad saying, Get back down there and get the root.
But as I dipped down to do so, She ran off to pick daisies.
