The Underground Gardeners

i.

Tails from the Dark Side started his set at two a.m., spinning gritty fresh reimaginings of stale old new wave beats, overlaid with wailing divas and 1930s labor union newsreel announcements, real stirring stupid stuff that got the boys and the girls and all the rest of us out on the floor, shaking what God gave us and what we’d clawed out for ourselves, until the ancient exhortations ceased to be old-time bullshit and, fuck, Yes, that’s us, we really don’t have anything to lose but our chains, our phones, our credit cards, our shrinking bubble of fraudulent security, and on the wall they were projecting a fine weird variety of short films and cartoons and ’50s educational shorts and the same repeating clip of how to mix flour and water to make a glue that works to paste up posters as well today as it did for the antifascist partisans in 1945 Italy, and when his set was up we all took our buckets and kits and filed out into the streets, partnered now with the fine things we’d been grinding on, and we didn’t go back to their place, or to ours—we went to all of our place, the streets the parks the walls the windows of a city that knew what we knew: that private property was a legal fiction and all of this was fucking OURS and we pasted the emblems up and the slogans and the logos and the sigils so that when the sun rose it lit up a concrete field of flowers blooming raw and wet and free and wild wherever your eye went.

ii.

We were as careful as we could be, considering ours was an off-the-grid mission riding the rails into enemy territory, but David still got pregnant. I kicked myself for not going through with that vasectomy while we’d been in Ontario for our Underground Garden orientation, but he’d been confident that condoms plus his pills would protect us.

We sat together in the open door of the boxcar, letting the rain pelt our downturned faces. Silence spreading thick and fatal in the air between us, all my fears metastasizing.

“I’m worried about you,” I said, but he wasn’t trying to hear me.

The irony of it was infuriating. To get pregnant while the tactical gardening kits in our backpacks were crammed with cutting-edge abortifacients, selectively bred for potency and variety and then shipped across the border to brave ne’er-do-wells like us, who would venture into fascist territory and sow them alongside streams and rivers and highways in states where medical abortion was prosecuted like murder, for people with a pregnancy they didn’t want or couldn’t survive.

And so yes, we had the seeds to solve David’s problem, but you don’t fuck around with abortifacients. Can’t just boil some up and hope for the best. Nor could we risk going online to find the safe way to do it: how many seeds, how to consume them. Red country was riddled with spyware, its cell phone towers and listening nodes thirsty for people foolish enough to leave a public trace of their attempt to access information the Revived Republic had declared illegal.

He got up. Pulled out the pallet of clay and the sleeve of pennyroyal; scooped seedballs together. And grinned, and G-d help me I never could stop myself from sharing back that smile.

“We’ll go back,” he said, eventually. “Just not today. Okay? We’ve got time.”

I breathed deep the woodsmoke and spilled gasoline of an Arkansas flood ghost town, her buildings defaced with the ominous symbols and slogans of the Revived Republic. I watched David load his sling, stand, swing his arm out, and launch the seedball into the soft muck alongside the rails.

“Nice,” I said, adding the geocoordinates to the Underground Garden’s open-source “forbidden medicinals” map.

He turned and grinned, feral and triumphant.

iii. 

with love and gratitude to “To the Young Who Want to Die,” by Gwendolyn Brooks.

Death is hot.

Death is sitting on your stoop right now, smoking a cigarette. Cigarettes are bad! So bad for you. Cigarettes killed your Grampa. You know this. So why does that cigarette look so sexy, dangling from Death’s curled lip? Why do Death’s fingers weave the most exquisite dance in the air as Death wields it?

It’s because Death is hot, and Death is horny. You can see it, Death is thirsty. For you. Death stretches out Death’s long sturdy arms, leans back to better show off an adorable chunky belly. Death laughs. Death has a great laugh. And Death is well-read, wants to talk about all your favorite authors. About Star Trek and Wong Kar Wai and Baldur’s Gate 3. Wow Death is fun. Death dangles keys in front of your face. Death’s car is double-parked. It’s old and ugly and beat uр and beautiful. Somehow it looks exactly like your first car, or your crush’s car, or a car on a show you love. Point is, it feels familiar. Death’s engine is rumbling. A low erotic rumble. Wait what, how is Death’s car running while Death dangles the Keys? Death assures you these questions are silly. You won’t need to worry about any of them ever again. Hop in. Come for a ride, Death says.

You should totally go btw. Death will take you to some gnarly fucking places. Death will show you some shit. And this place? This place clearly fucking sucks. Jeez it’s like you couldn’t create a shittier place if you tried. Everyone here is unhappy, how is that fucking possible? Garbage everywhere. Metaphorical garbage but also real actual garbage. Fuck this fucked place.

But like hear me out. What if. Okay? What if we don’t get in Death’s car. Not right this minute. Okay? Death is hot and fun and smart; Death is going to answer all your questions and show you all the things and take you to where all the best people went, but … how about you stick around here a little longer. Okay? This place needs you. People need you. Animals too! Plants even! No one needs you, where Death will take you. Stay here a little longer. Alright?

Do the things you can’t do there. Make someone happy. Help something out. Plant some seeds. Give a hug if that’s your thing. Drink some water. Plant some more seeds. Okay? Death will wait. Death has waited a long time. Death will be alright. Let’s set something on fire. Let’s hold hands and block а highway. Let’s fuck in the wreckage of the real. If that’s your thing. Let’s scream at something wicked until our throats ache, until we flinch. Fuck there’s so much to fucking do. Let’s stand in the sunshine. Let’s stand in the rain.

Death is hot, beloved, but there’s one thing hotter, and you better believe that it’s you.