She may be selfish and determined to crowd out all our other, more socially acceptable denizens of the garden. Her voice is not the dignified, mellifuous one I thought I wanted. She prickles and sulks and puts me down for being too much of a dork, too much like somebody's mom. My mental garden is full of crab grass. I call it roses.
Life is sweet.
Susan Grieger is a Minneapolis-based freelancer specializing in books, arts, and women's issues. Her fiction has appeared in the Lake Street Review and Z Miscellaneous .