Soul Searching

By Asche Keegan

I’ve been soul searching lately, but I never thought I would find myself on the softball field, caught between a base and a pop up high in the air.

The game is tied, and the pitcher shoots me a glare through her eye makeup. I grin back, leaning onto the back of my foot. She throws the ball, and even though it is just outside the strike zone, I swing, making contact and watching it soar into the air. I can feel my soul rising alongside it, as if freed from all Earthly pursuits.

I’m a Christian; Someday I’m going up there, I think.

That’s my first thought, and them I’m racing towards first base. The coach is yelling at me to run faster, to beat the ball, so even as I touch the base I’m turning towards second.

I’m excitable, I realize, and it pushes me on, propelling my feet forward.

My teammates are screaming at me in the dugout, yelling for me to beat the ball, and I dig in my heels, running harder. As I round second, my coach is watching the ball, telling me to hustle if I want to make it to third.

I’m obstinate.

The ball’s coming towards the base, but I beat it to third, and the umpire calls me safe. The player at third sighs and throws it to the pitcher, who misses the ball.

My coach is screaming for me to stay on the bag, where it’s safe. My teammates are yelling at me to stay. Everyone on the bleachers is yelling for me to stay where I am.

But I’m ambitious,

so I take off running anyway.

I give it all I’ve got, even as the pitcher realizes what is happening and whips the ball to the catcher. I drop my knee and slide, foot slamming into the plate just as the catcher turns to tag me out.

“She’s SAFE!” the umpire cries, almost as excited as I am. I stagger to my feet, my teammates shaking their head at me even through their grins.

“The coach said he was gonna kill you,” one mentions as an aside.

But as we stream back onto the field to shake hands, I realize most of all that I’m competitive, and that probably accounts for the entire lot.

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Out of Concrete

By Asche Keegan

Across the Earth gardens grew and ivy trailed across long lost walls while forests rose and fell with the passing of the planet around the sun. Fertile soil reaped fair results, but little grew where men had domesticated.

But in one place, the Moon and a Rose loved a Girl, and the Girl and the Rose loved the Moon, and the Moon and the Girl loved the Rose, and all three lived in paradise together.

One night, when only the Moon was awake, the Girl ran out from her house and through the bushes that lined the home's exterior. Plants scratched at her legs, coming awake from their slumber, but when they saw only the child, they returned to their dreams. The Girl had come out to visit the Moon and the Rose, but the Rose bush had caught a disease.

They held a whispered conversation, and the Girl saw a Seed beside the ailing bush. She picked it up and whispered to it in turn. "How are you today, Seed?"

The Seed seemed to glow a little brighter in her hand, as if smiling at her.

It lay nestled in her clammy hands, and she grubbed about in the dark for the perfect place for it.

“Should I plant you near the well?”

Again, the Seed seemed to smile.

She trod towards the well near her parents’ house, too young to read the signs of warning. Besides, she had always wanted to explore the well, so there she ran during the night, leaping up onto the side and peering down into the dark.

“Rose, you couldn’t grow down there,” she said to the Seed. Despite her youth, even the Girl knew that all things needed love and light to grow. Near the side of the well was a patch of concrete with a crack filled in with dirt and grass. Content, the Girl knelt beside the well and pulled out the weeds. Soon, she had created the perfect cranny to nestle a seed, and she clumsily buried it in the dirt.

“Now all you need is a little bit of water and you'll grow right up,” she said, remembering her lessons from school.

She turned to the well, where a bucket dangled from a fraying rope. The Girl leaned over the chasm to untangle it. Her stubby arms could not quite reach the edge of the bucket, so she leaned a little further—just far enough to lose her balance.

She toppled in, and even the Seed started awake with her aching scream cut short. All the world fell silent and wept for her loss, watering the Seed's nook with tears. Because the Girl who had given the Seed a home had died, the Seed chose to live.

Thus, the Seed grew. Night became day, then days turned back to nights. The well was closed and barricaded, and the original owners moved away. Weeds covered the Seed, closing in and cutting off its food sources and nutrients. The Seed huddled away in its shell, waiting for the weeds to fall back. Finally, at the next rainfall, it shoved through its casing and plunged into the soil.

It took advantage of every moment the Sun gave light and warmth, absorbing its heat from dawn to dusk. It used its stored energy to grow at night, even while all the others around it slept. Gradually, the Seed became a Sprout, and the Sprout became a Bud.

The Bud caught the attention of the Moon, for though the Moon had the pleasure of looking down on every garden in the world, he still missed the Girl, and looked after what she had planted. One clear night, the Moon reached out a special moonbeam to the Bud, pulling it from its slumber.

“Rose, why haven't you given up yet?”

The Bud looked drowsily upward, caught by the entrancing light. “Why would I give up? How could I give up? I am watered. I am warmed. I live.”

“You grow in concrete,” the Moon pointed out. “You will be cut away before you grow your first flower.” The Moon said these words with no hint of malice, but rather curiosity to the Bud’s motives. Yet, the words seemed to pull the Bud from its slumber, and it looked up, shaking its head.

“It matters not what I grow in, just that I grow.”

And so the Moon sighed, wishing that the Bud would not meet the defeat so clearly evident in its future. “Then I will help you,” the Moon said. “Some have said my light holds magic. Some have said it brings joy. Regardless, of the weeds in this garden, it will shine only on you, and it will bless you above all else. It will bless you because I loved the Girl who planted you, and I see you loved her too.”

The Bud hummed, and the light of the Moon pumped quicksilver through its veins. By dawn, the Bud had begun to unfold, becoming the flower it was meant to be.

The other plants did not care to grow as the Bud did, and they took turns jeering and comparing. “It’s a good thing you’re growing in concrete. It means you have less weeds trying to stop you from climbing up. You know you are just going to die, right? There’s no space for your roots."

The Bud paid the other flowers no heed, and when the Realtor arrived, the Bud paid him no attention either. Yet when the Realtor came back in the afternoon, dragging a lawn mower behind him, the garden cried out for mercy. He cleared the plants growing around the well—all the weeds, dandelions, and even the unfolding Bud. Cut down to its roots, the unfurling flower lost all its progress.

That night, when the Moon came back around to the Bud’s crack in the concrete, only darkness loomed where the Bud had been. The rest of the garden had also been destroyed, and in despair, the Moon flooded the garden with his light, searching in vain for the one who had also loved the Girl.

Eventually, the Moon saw the spot the Bud had been, watching the seedling push itself further out of the ground once more.

“Rose, why don't you weaken?” the Moon asked.

The Rose wobbled in the night, but almost stood an inch taller under the Moon's gaze. “I may be weak, but my roots are strong.”

“Your roots are thin and buried in concrete.”

“There’s a crack in the concrete. I made it,” the Rose hummed.

“You…made a crack in the concrete? But grass can not push past stone.”

“Well, it’s a good thing I’m more than grass. My roots are rocks hardened by grief and my stem is willpower embodied."

“Then grow, Rose,” the Moon said, and he poured out all his light to the Rose, which stretched upward and flourished.

That night, the Rose grew. And the next day, while the rest of the garden moaned, the Rose continued upward, sucking in the nutrients from the ground around it, reaching past the crack in the concrete and pushing forward.

By the time the Realtor returned, a solitary rose soared high, a wild survivor in the midst of tragedy. This time, the Realtor brought others with him, showing off the well as a decorative display, but the Wife seemed more interested in the Rose.

“It’s growing from the concrete,” she mentioned to her Husband.

“Like us,” he replied.

Every day the Wife and the Husband would take turns coming out to the Rose and nurturing it, watering it, weeding the surrounding grass and helping it grow. The Rose began to love the family, humming along to their whispered conversations around the flowers.

One day the Wife started crying, hands plunged into the soil around her. Her Husband held her and comforted her. “She will come one day, and when she does, we'll name her Rose after you.”

The next time the Moon came down to converse with the Rose, he found it fully abloom, despite its odd lodging in the ground.

“I see you found some caretakers,” the Moon said.

The Rose hummed its familiar song and bobbed in the cascade of light. “Yes, but you were my first. My mentor, my light, my hope in the darkness.”

“Don't forget about the Girl,” the Moon replied.

“I miss her," the Rose said.

“She will come again,” the Moon promised. “Already, the Moon could hear the planning in the house, the promise of another life to come.

Two weeks later, when the excited shouts of parents to be erupted, the Rose grew even taller, waiting for the Girl to arrive.

When she came, she looked a couple years older than the Girl had been. Her parents taught her how to hold the roses, taught her how to use the well even though they kept it covered, and taught her how to love the Rose, which grew and grew with the Girl throughout all her years.

And the Moon and the Rose loved the Girl, and the Girl and the Rose loved the Moon, and the Moon and the Girl loved the Rose, and they lived happily ever after.

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Freshly Dusted

Soul Searching

By Asche Keegan

A Sentence

By Asche Keegan

Out of Concrete

By Asche Keegan

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