A letter from the thrice-widowed, late Elsbeth Sorrow to the daughter she grew in the garden

Dear Ginny,

It’s the last night of September. This week, your leaves started to change—darkest green to richest red. Your growth this first year has been miraculous, even for you, my hardy twining vine. I remember planting you in the midnight hours on March 13th and waking late morning to see you had already sprouted. You, grown from seed and the bloody matter I’d expelled when you miscarried inside me. I should have known—you needed to be free. 

Pruning is meant to happen in spring when your leaves would grow purple and blue-black berries would cluster and call to hungry birds shaking off their winter chill. But I’m coming tonight with my shears, dear one. I’ll place this letter at the base of the oak you cling to. 

I wish beyond wishes that you could release your holdfasts and come down from those branches, walk with two feet into the house with me. All 200 feet of you. I would feed you warm bread and milk and put you to bed with me in front of the fire. I would brush your tendrils as if they were hair while you snored little snores out of some hidden mouth. But the life I hoped to give to you is not the one you’ll have. I grew you here with the same hope of all parents—to one day watch their children grow up, move away, live a life of their own choosing. And although you grow, you cannot go. I never meant to anchor you, to keep you here forever. 

Forgive my grand delusions, forgive me my mistakes. I do what I do only to remedy my failures. I will not let you suffer here alone, forever. I cut you down with the deepest ache in my throat and a regret I shall never overcome. 

Forgive me, for how I have loved you. 

Forever,

Your mother

(Written in wax crayon on kitchen parchment, discovered in the days following her tragic death. Ms. Sorrow was found to be strangled and strung from Virginia Creeper encasing an old oak tree shading the back corner of her vegetable plot)