The Gatekeeper’s Haibun

My job is to ward people off from the special exhibition in the garden: the wall of dianthus for photos, the beds of foxgloves, the arch of wisteria. On this summer day the doors are flung open. The greenhouse becomes a lightbulb, and I stop everybody: five bucks each. One young family looks bewildered. I switch to Spanish, they nod and edge away. The ones who do go in sometimes ask me questions, like, What's that vine over there? On my break I check: an apple tree shaped to grow in a grid.

Why do I guard a garden no bigger than a bedroom on this brightest afternoon? It's like when God gave a flaming sword to an angel and said, They broke my rule. Keep them out of Eden. I think the angel got tired toward the end of her shift, so she let a whole family past her. Listened to them chatter in the lavender. She could not keep them, in the end, from coneflowers and cypresses, lilies and prairie grasses.

--

If the cherubim
went on strike, anyone could
walk into heaven.

Monica Colón is a Salvadoran/American writer from Texas. Her poems have appeared in or are forthcoming in SWWIM Every Day, Honey Literary, Boshemia Magazine, the winnow magazine, and West Trestle Review. She has received a Pushcart Prize nomination and the Iris N. Spencer Sonnet Award from West Chester University Poetry Center. She lives in Chicago with her twin.

Published July 15 2023