"Julie, ya best not be writin', girl," a thick southwestern Virginian accent punched the smoky air with accusation. "I told ya to put those burritos in the microwave half a' hour ago." The gruff man snorted and pounded on the door again. "Julie?" He waited a second, adjusting his straw cowboy hat so that it shaded his wild eyes a hair more. Then he shoved his cigarette back between his shriveled lips. 

When absolute silence met his voice, Mr. Carney rammed open the little, white door. Its hinges creaked like springs in an old sofa. He revealed a room cramped not due to its actual size but due to its abundant contents. The bed bent under the weight of three heavy, Mexican blankets in magenta, orange, and yellow wool. The stench of old soda and spoiled milk pervaded the space, absorbed by the numerous books piled in and on top of the shelves that covered every inch of wall space. A steel typewriter rested in the dead center of the room. Bottles of every make were strewn across the floor. Not a breathing soul was there, however. The room was so disorderly that a passive observer could not tell whether someone currently lived there or had abandoned the closet-sized room decades ago.

Mr. Carney stomped his foot and muttered an obscenity before trudging downstairs to his favorite armchair. A dusting of cigarette ashes marked the trail of his huffy descent. Virginia Tech was up against UVA.

Meanwhile, lavender swayed eerily in the breeze as the sun's rays stretched to embrace a humble garden. Like displaced eels, the pale plants pushed up from the earth and pulsated with a mysterious energy. They bumped into clumps of roses and lilies, but somehow managed to remain untangled from their neighbors. Julia stood several yards away, observing her urban bounty. The sweet scent of her efforts swirled around the air like butterflies engaged in a fervent mating dance. A mound of grayish dirt occupied the middle of the perfect square plot of land. On top of the mound, a raven flapped its wings and shrieked at the worms and snails lurking below its ebony talons. He scratched the soil until, either tired or bored, he took off to the skies. Had he continued digging, he would have discovered an opus. 

The mound was not especially sprawling, but it definitely seemed amiss in the super green park. It smelled like life's forgotten discards: pomegranate seeds, watermelon rinds, avocado peels. The texture resembled that of lint, soft and fluffy with the occasional stiff grain woven into the earthen fabric. Not that the urge to throw their hands onto the mound possessed many passers-by. Most of the park's visitors took the mound for another garden-to-be. They seemed to think that gardens only grew flowers and plants, and that only vegetation had the ability (or right) to blossom.

Underneath the mound, ideas burgeoned in their subterranean lair, pushing out their roots to imbue the dirt with an aura, with history, with purpose. Or a breed of adolescent anxiety strangely unaffected by cheerleading try-outs and Homecoming Court elections.

Just as some people plant strawberries or petunias, either for pleasure or sustenance, Julia Carney planted poems. Ever since she was the size of a half-grown sunflower, she woke up with verse stomping around her head and words spurting out of her mouth. The stuff of lullabies and nursery rhymes soon evolved into more mature musings, though the occasional Emo angst twelve-liner was inevitable. Whatever she wrote, Julia saw her obsession as a gift from Demeter, not a time-out slip from the normal realities of youth.

One particularly illustrative morning, Julia bolted out of bed and punched out sixty pages of poetry on her typewriter, not once stopping to eat or even use the bathroom. Grime from the previous day still stuck to her arms, begging to be removed by a shower head. Her throat cried for water and her stomach shuddered in recognition of its hollowness. Yet Julia continued typing, counting syllables, mumbling aloud various forms of alliteration, and occasionally snapping her fingers in frustration. Nonetheless, despite hunger, despite her father's shrill voice coming from the bottom of the stairs, despite annoyance at her momentary inability to conjure an image, she glowed. She glowed the way some girls her age would glow upon first hearing "I love you," or at the sight of themselves in the perfect prom gown in a department store mirror. Writing was her own version of a teenage fantasy--and it cost significantly less than a Lamborghini.

Three hours later, as the sun hovered above the willow tree she had watched grow from seed to mammoth, Julia typed her final words: "To Sophie." At last, the manuscript breathed. The creatures mentioned in the various poems released their spirits into the air, urging themselves upon the ears of men in need of saving. Julia finally exhaled after what seemed like a day's worth of torturing her lungs. Memories of swim meets briefly swept over her before she tightly rolled up the manuscript. Then she stuffed it in a big juice jug, and gently placed the jug atop the growing pile of bottles in the corner of her room. She smiled at the pile's ever-expanding size, thrilled at the challenge at which the pile hinted. She sighed a little.

"What have ya been doin' in there for so long, girl?" Her father asked, only because he'd noticed that his breakfast wasn't set out on the kitchen counter. "Answer me, or else I'll barge right on in, Julie."

"Nothing, Dad. I'm just dealing with my eye. It's all red."

"Better not be bringin' pink eye into this house. Be careful who ya get with, ya hear? There's a reason I wanna to meet every boy ya even thinkin' of neckin' with."

Julia coughed. "Yes, Dad. I'll be down soon. I just have to put some more drops in." She coughed again. "Ouch."

"Don't poke yar eye out, child. Ya know I ain't got health insurance no more."

Julia began her planting process by selecting the perfect bottle. Considering all of the bottles she came across during the week--from tripping over the ones strewn across the public park to spotting litter in the school cafeteria--Julia could afford to let bottle snobbery prevail. Every Monday night, the evening before the garbage collector came, Julia rummaged through her neighbors' bins. The stench of rotting banana peels and house paint seered her nostrils. Coffee grounds caked to her hands and wrists. Egg yolk crept underneath her nails. Yet she forged on, through shredded envelopes and the contents of cats' litter boxes. Julia even panted from excitement during the stinky process. The dirtier the neighbor, the more precious the bottles, she had come to learn.

"They're so busy drowning in filth that they forget how to recognize beauty," Julia reasoned as she rubbed her hands in delight. Visions of her father decaying to the sounds of referee whistles and revving engines as he chugged light beer flashed through Julia's mind. Empty milk cartons and crumpled newspapers nearly engulfed his seated figure. Julia shook her head and then dove into her treasure chest, where the visions vanished.

The majority of Julia's goods were plastic soda bottles, but occasionally she wound up with pretty glass vessels. What was most important was that she could completely erase all traces of the bottle's brand. If the label wasn't easily removable or the brand was engraved into the bottle, Julia immediately rejected it and searched for others. She cringed at the thought of a soda company whose advertisements featured bikini-clad women and drooling basketball players speaking for her work. 

"That's not my version of poetry," she said.

Once Julia finished her scavenging, she had such a big sack trailing behind her that she resembled a young, female Santa Claus. The bottles clinked and clanked with her every step on the way home. When wearing sandals, clogs, or other low-cut shoes, Julia often returned with raw ankles. No matter what, the sack always banged at her heels from point to point during her journey back. When she was especially tired, Julia tripped over the smelly sack, mumbled a Shakespearean curse, checked that none of her bottles were broken, and continued walking beneath the fluttering street lamps. It didn't matter if sirens sounded or stray dogs trotted behind her. She dragged on, not abandoning her bottles for any city distraction.

Eventually, Julia returned to her room and stored her new treasures under her bed. There, the bottles slumbered with the centipedes, dust bunnies, and less loved books. Julia, in turn, slept peacefully without the anxiety of being short on bottles pounding at the back of her head. She dreamt of familiar sensations, of romance, of personal events, of foreign lands, of various types of humiliation, of distant historical periods, and of things she could only explain in poetry.

When Julia woke up the next morning, she was often too giddy to start the day with breakfast. Her eyes shone, her shoulders shuddered, and her mouth curled into a "U." Then she sprung out from under her covers and called upon the muses in a mock Soprano, waving her sheet around like a cape:

"O Calliope, O Erato, O Euterpe! Grant me the power and passion to pen my poetry!" Her arms flung out with the intensity of a Broadway actors'.

She twirled around and flicked up her bountiful hair. "I know I'm absurd," she cried, "But I can't help it." She smiled goofily until the point where her father often knocked on the wall and demanded that she "stop makin' a darn ruckus, Julie" while he still lied half-asleep in his room.

"I told ya not to wake me up 'til the game started! It's only ten now! Tell those boys to stop callin' ya or I'll stop payin' the phone bill."

Julia's giggles faded, but she continued smiling on the inside. She tied her hair back in a single sweep. Then she pulled her bottles from under her bed and raced to the bathroom. A whole box full of cleaning tools awaited her, from warped toothbrushes to shredded sponges. They felt worn and comfortable between her fingers. The soap smelled faintly of lavender. She scrubbed the bottles long and hard until they sparkled. Foam grew all over the sink, sometimes plopping onto the floor tiles, with the fervency of multiplying cells. When Mr. Carney eventually got out of bed, he usually complained about his daughter's "sinfully long showers."

"Well, the water just takes so long to warm up, Dad."

"Ya tell that to the utilities company, girl. Ya just lucky yar mama ain't alive to see that bill or she'd whip yar Yankee behind."

After breakfast (typically buttered toast with fried baloney and bug juice because nothing decent was ever lying around the kitchen), Julia whipped out her stationary and fanciest pen. The pen was black with gold engraving, something in Italian she had never bothered translating. She tended to press down too hard as she wrote, so exchanging the nib was a common occurence. On more aggressive days, Julia pounced on her typewriter instead of resorting to old-fashioned pen and paper. The texture of the letters beneath her fingers felt theraputic. Whether Julia lunged for the pen or the typewriter, she began writing her poems, everything from couplets and sonnets to haiku and tanka. If she was particularly happy, her poems were all about the beautiful things in the world, like a round stone smoothed by the sea's gentle lulling. If she was sad, she wrote about all the terrible things in the world, like homelessness, cod liver oil, incurable diseases, her father's perpetual Athlete's Foot, and the classmates who made fun of her. What is good and comely, and what is bad and ugly is all relative.

Writing, of course, was the easy part. Collecting was slighter harder. But the most difficult part about planting poems was the actual gardening. It tasked her mind and her body, straining her back in particular as she lugged around a shovel that weighed half as much as she did. Julia usually carried a sack of stuffed bottles and the shovel all at once, but, when lucky, she managed to sneak away in her father's beaten truck, the one full of more rust than forest green metal.

Mr. Carney bought his pickup the same year Julia was born. The 1978 Chevy Silverado had tan leather seats, if they could be called that anymore. The seats were so worn that whoever sat on the passenger side nearly rubbed his back pockets against the road underneath him. At least that's how Mr. Carney liked to tell the story, in order to discourage others from asking for rides. To add to the dilapidation, cigarette holes dappled the cushions like Dalmatien spots. Dust completely filled the cup-holder. Gum and other anonymous sticky substances wedged their way into various crevices throughout the truck, waiting for an unknowing hand to slip into their gluey territory. The seat belts no longer even buckled. But Julia wasn't aiming for an elegant ride. She simply needed a large bed for her bottles.

"I don't ever want to see ya drivin' my truck, Julia," her father muttered over cold beers as he ran his fat fingers through his greasy hair. It was his trademark refrain. "That's my truck. Nobody drives that truck but me. Nobody in the whole wide world. Or else."

But with a drunken man obsessed with televised truck shows and football games presenting her only barrier, Julia just had to snatch the keys and go. A jingle and a jangle later, she was out the door with as many bottles as a hobo carries to the recycling center for some spare change. Once she unloaded her arms and covered the pile of bottles with a tarp, she started the engine. It grumbled like a disturbed old man dreading a dentist's visit because he knew his toothache was real this time. The bottles bounced up and down to the truck's natural rhythm as Julia drove to her haven. Sometimes Julia didn't even turn on the radio and instead relished the bottles' plastic and glass symphony.

Where Julia went after stealing her father's truck consisted of two options: the park or anywhere else. Besides maintaining a garden in the city's largest park, Julia scattered her poems around the selected neighborhood of the week. One week she chose Church Hill; the next, it was Shockoe Bottom; afterwards, came Downtown; then Jackson Ward; then Ginter Park; and so on. Her eventual goal was to cover the whole city, but she figured the best approach was to saturate one block at a time with the beauties of verse.

"I want someone to find a whole anthology's worth in one afternoon," Julia told herself again and again. "Maybe that will prompt them to look for more after that." She had even penciled in 'Project Afternoon Anthology' on the back of her city map, signaling her brave intentions. She always carried the map in her jean pocket so she could plot her next burial location at any moment.

The city featured a smorgasborg of Victorian townhouses, beaten-up single family homes, hipster cafes, impressive skyscrapers, gas stations, big box retailers, Mom and Pop restaurants, and university buildings. Nestled between the strange mixture of late 1800s and 1970s architecture lied a network of gravel-filled allies, parks, and empty lots. These in-between spaces proved to be veritable bottle graves. So, when wary eyes and wagging tongues disappeared, Julia took her shovel and dug. 

The metal shovel rang against whatever it hit and vibrated in Julia's skinny arms. She stepped on it with both feet, pressing her full weight into the stubborn tool, before it refused to budge. Even then, it might have only moved a centimeter and flicked a pebble or two away from her intended burial ground. Broken glass, tar, shredded coffee cans, and unmentionable rubbish usually harden city dirt to the innocent penetrations of a poetic girl's frivolous projects.

During one of her late-night digging excursions, Julia remembered a time when her father picked up a storybook from her at the grocery store. Her four-year-old self shot straight to the door, shouting, "Daddy, you're home!" Mr. Carney patted her head and then walked over to the kitchen to set down the grocery bags teeming with Little Debbie's cakes, white bread, beer, corn on the cob, and hamburger meat. Julia followed her father. He packed the food either in the cabinets or refrigerator, one by one, not in any hurry, and yet still not especially organized. Julia watched him inquisitively as she flicked her pigtails.

"Could I have a Nutty Bar, Daddy?"

"Not yet. I got somethin' even better, Julie." Mr. Carney paused for suspense. Then, bit by bit, he withdrew a glittery book from one of the brown paper bags.

Julia gasped, throwing her hands to her chubby cheeks. "What a pretty book!"

"I thought ya'd like it. The pony's winkin' at ya, see?" Mr. Carney danced the book around so that it jigged with as much animation as any doll.

"Read it to me, Daddy. Please!"

Mr. Carney winced. Julia grabbed the book, glanced down at the book, and then back at her father until he said, "Ask yar mamma to read it to ya."

"But Mommy doesn't get back until 6 o'clock and the little hand isn't on the--"

"I said yar mamma will read it to ya, girl. Don't defy me." He slammed a jar of peanut butter against the counter. After sighing, he pushed the jar into one of the cabinets to reside beside grape jelly and a bag of marshmallows.

"Why can't you read it to me, Daddy?"

Mr. Carney snorted. "Of course I can read it to you."

"Then, Daddy--"

"Fine. Quit your belly-achin', child, and sit down in the family room. I'll read it to ya there."

A couple minutes later, Julia's father lumbered into the family room. Julia's small frame took up about a tenth of the sofa's cushion space. Mr. Carney plopped down beside her, causing the little girl's cushion to push up and jolt her. Julia, beaming, cuddled up against her father's broad chest. Her face pushed against the plush that jiggled beneath his white T-shirt.

"As soon as I saw this book," the man began, "I knew my Julie would love it. With all the glitter and pink stuff and the pretty pony, I guess it was a good choice."

"Yes, Daddy. A very good choice." Julia nodded her head earnestly. "Please read it to me, Daddy."

"I'll get there," he said and cleared his throat. He scratched his cheek and then opened to the book's title page. Though the book was called, The Mighty, Magical Mare, Mr. Carney pronounced it "The Mighty, Magical, Ma-Ré." The butchered word hung uncertainly in the air.

"What's a ma-ré, Daddy?" Julia asked, clapping her hands. They smelled like the wax from cheap crayons.

"Your mama probably knows."

"Oh, okay. It must be one of those girl things, right, Daddy?"

"Uh-huh. Now," he cleared his throat again, "'Once upon a time,' golly gee, all the stories start out that way, don't they?" Julia smiled back at him. "Um, 'Once upon a time...there...was...a...mighty...magical...ma-ré. She...was...pink...and...very...pretty...with...a...curly...fluffy...tail...like...a..."

Julia cut off her father, "You don't read like a grown-up, Daddy."

The man glared at the little girl. "What ya mean?"

"You read real slow, like a not-grown-up person. Like me and cousin David." 

Mr. Carney cleared his throat and stroked the brim of his cowboy hat. "Hasn't yar mama told ya by now?" He closed the book as soon as the question emerged from his mouth.

Julia shook her teeny head.

Mr. Carney squeezed the book so hard that his fingers reddened. Then he cleared his throat again before saying, "See, Daddy had to drop outta school to take care of Uncle Billy and Aunt Charlotte so Grandma and Grandpa could work without worryin' 'bout lil' kids runnin' 'round unattended. And then once Uncle Billy and Aunt Charlotte were ol' enough to take care of themselves, Grandpa lost his job and...Daddy had to work in the coalmines. So, Daddy never went back to school. That's how come I can't read too good." Mr. Carney poked the inside of his cheek with his tongue and rose. "So, like I said, yar mama can read it to ya--"

Julia leapt up and hugged her father's knees. Her voice implored in the way only a four-year-old's can. "Let me read it to you, Daddy. I won't know all the words, but I can try."

The father shook his daughter off. She fell to the floor, horror streaking her face. Mr. Carney had resorted to shouting, "Why ya so eager to read, girl? Ain't nothin' special in it. Readin's for them egghead types who like nothin' better than to sit 'round all day in their fancy tweed jackets, smokin' big money tobacco in their pipes. They like to talk and write all these hocus-pocus books and essay like they so smart, like they understand the whole universe. But what do they really accomplish in the end? Huh? At least at the end of the day, I can tell ya what I done. I don't just pretend I changed the world by thinkin' all these big thoughts. I'm too practical for that, Julie. And, Christ, if I teach ya anythin' in life, I hope I teach ya that: be practical. Do real work. Find a way to survive and mind yar own business, not goin' and tellin' other people how to run their lives 'cause you read some enlightened book that had all the answers so ya think ya know better than the Pope."

Julia stared at her father, eyes as empty as saucers after supper. She now sat on the sofa again, her arms no longer wrapped around her father's sharp knees. Her bottom lip trembled.

"Never mind," Mr. Carney murmured, as he took off his hat, "I'm sorry, honey. Yar not ol' enough to understand what I'm babblin' 'bout." He placed his hat back on his head, and shifted it back and forth. Then he wandered back to the kitchen to put away the rest of the groceries.

Julia remained on the sofa, kicking her petite feet to and fro. Then, convinced that her father would not pop into the room again anytime soon, Julia hid The Mighty and Magical Mare. She kissed it before tucking it under one of the pale blue cushions. It was the beginning to her constant search for crevices.

Seeking out new nooks and crannies in the city proved more and more tasking as the days and weeks and months passed. There were only so many places she had not already touched, or only so many places she could bury the bottles without arousing suspicion. Street lamps are not kind to anyone with a penchant for clandestine activities. So Julia resorted to her bountiful garden more and more. Whether sunshine pounded or snow crept, the girl fled to her verse nursery with bottles upon bottles in her arms or in the stolen truck. 

"Christ, Julie," Mr. Carney often grumbled during commercial breaks on the rare occasion he intercepted his daughter, "Where ya goin' all the time? You got a secret boyfriend or somethin'?"

Julia flushed. "I'm just busy, that's all."

"Better not be gettin' too busy with that boy, girl." A sly smile always accompanied this statement. Then he turned his head back to the screen and his eyes glazed over.

Julia quickly said, "Yes, sir," and escaped before her father could prod any further into her love life. 

The park brimmed with children's laughter, dogs' incessant barking, and birds' little melodies. Yet, despite its noises, Julia could not imagine a more peaceful place in the whole city. After sliding into the parking lot, she found a spot, and tip-toed to the back of the truck. She took a requisite second to gaze at all of her bottles and reflect upon the poem that each one harbored. Each poem represented at least five minutes of her life; other poems, five hours. Maybe one day, someone would gather all of Julia's bottles and use them to calculate her lifespan. After experiencing such a thought, Julia heaved up the sack. If additional bottles, ones that could not fit in the sack, remained, she would simply return for them later.

Walking to her garden involved passing a ketchup red playground, a duck pond, and a soccer field. A wildflower or a charming bird might distract Julia, even leading her on a detour if it impressed her enough. She set down the sack to chase after chipmunks or talk to the children who asked her to give them a push on the swing. But Julia never forgot her purpose and heaved up her sack once again to continue her journey. An aching back or sore limbs never deterred her.

Upon arriving at her garden, Julia immediately consulted her diagram so she knew exactly where to bury her next bottles. She had drawn it on the opposite side of the city map she always carried with her. The paper, yellow with age, felt like buttery leather and smelled of rich ink. Her precise coordinates filled the page, showing just how soon Julia would need a new space to garden. 

Anyone who studied the map would soon realize that Julia divided her garden into beds. Each bed contained a different type of poem, according to subject matter. A couple dozen of the beds stretched out. One was for humorous poems. One was for nature poems. One was for political poems. One was for love poems. In fact, probably seventy-five percent of all of the love poems she had ever written were entirely devoted to a girl named Sophie.The girls' first encounter--perhaps better termed 'Julia's sighting'--naturally occurred in the library.

Julia was hunched over an anthology of Russian literature, poking at the Table of Contents because she couldn't decide between Gogol and Puskin, when she casually glanced up to rest her eyes from the page. Then she pressed her finger so hard into the paper that her nail broke. Not a second had passed when she spotted a thin girl, one so pale she appeared wrought by consumption. Her mousy hair hung in stringy clumps by the sides of her face, framing flittering gray eyes. A black, baggy, knee-length garment engulfed her skeletal frame. Then the tiniest shoes Julia had ever seen anyone her age ever wear encased the girl's bony feet. A red-and-white name tag stretched across the left side of her chest. It read 'Sophie' in timid script.

Julia gulped and stood up, nursing the broken nail in her mouth. She glided over to the bookshelf where the girl perused dusty film history books. The girl picked up a large red book that seemed to weigh as much as she did. Julia pretended not to notice when she nearly toppled over. Instead, she grabbed a book on Les Enfants du Paradis. The first page it opened to Garance and Baptiste embracing each other. Julia stared at the photograph for a few seconds before blushing at the constellations lighting the actors' dark eyes. Their mutual love for each other illuminated the edges of their ever-expanding pupils. She slammed the book shut, wedged it back onto the shelves and marched back to her desk. Sophie remained where she was, barely able to hold up the red book.

Julia ripped out a sheet of notebook paper from her binder. A couple of students whipped around to glare at her, but not Sophie. Sophie continued browsing through books, braiding her legs with each hesitant step she took. Julia's hands zipped in and out of her pockets and backpack in search of pen. Finally she seized one and began scribbling with the intensity of supernova exploding. The stardust sprinkled across her page.

Julia hardly knew what she had written by the time she put her pen down and read it. In writing so fervently, she had poked periodic holes in the notebook paper, so that the sheet could've been mistaken for Braille. Her lips smacked together as she muttered the lines to herself:

“She is”
Eyes are always on the moon
ones that covet
Kings of Deception always swoon
songs that slice the heart
Melancholy maidens spend their hours at the loom
their opuses bleeding with loneliness

She is the moon
She is the king
She is the maiden

Owls only pray in the ripe of dark
where they are hidden from heretic birds
On the tree, lovers leave their mark
the sap runs with their ballad
Gabriel whispered a tender ‘Hark!’
calming the startled Virgin

She is the owl
She is the tree
She is the messenger

Julia stared at the words a little longer before turning around to glimpse Sophie once more. Sophie twitched her little nose as her eyes ate up the page before her. Julia tucked the sheet of paper into her backpack, careful not to make too much noise. Then she slunk off to skip her next class. Her wagon and shovel awaited her.

For the next four semesters, Julia spied on Sophie, but never once spoke to her. She hid behind bookshelves, sat near her in the library, and even followed her to the girls' restroom on a few occasions. Yet all interactions between the two girls transpired only in Julia's mind and, by extension, in her poetry. 

One afternoon, two years later, Julia was entering the city library during one of her habitual visits. Suddenly a librarian in a turquoise sweater called her. 

"Good afternoon, Julia," the librarian whispered. She was an older, red-headed woman with smile wrinkles that extended beneath her eyes, competing with her light purple bags. 

Julia lit up. "Hello, Ms. Connors. I wanted to--"

"Have you seen the display window?"

Julia set her big pile of books on the circulation counter, annoyed when a couple slid to the floor. "No. Did the Friends of the Library finally get that African painter they wanted?"

"No, not yet," Ms. Connors tittered, causing her eyeglasses to slip. "Why don't you...take a peek? I think you'll be pleased by what's in there instead." She winked and pushed up her burgundy glasses so that they sat on the bridge of her nose again. Her nostrils flared in excitement.

Sensing a pleasant urgency in Ms. Connors' voice, Julia left the books there. She scampered toward the case in the main lobby but halted once she got about six feet in front of it. Julia squinted her eyes at the glass's glare, trying to discern lied behind the reflections. At first she thought she had caught herself in another daydream. She pinched herself and gasped. Someone had not only unearthed a dozen of her bottles. Not only that, but they had convinced the library to put them up for all patrons to see. The bottles were lined up at the bottom of the display case, with her printed poems pasted to the back wall. Julia's heart began to hammer in her chest. Her whole body seemed to tingle.

All of the poems talked about love or her beloved, though none explicitly mentioned Sophie. The words "dove," "eternity," "beautiful," "soul," and "passion" floated everywhere. The very poem that Julia wrote when she first saw Sophie in the school library hung up in the middle of the twelve posted there. 

Julia glanced around when suddenly she spotted Sophie. She was scanning the flyers stapled to the community board. Julia grew even more nervous. Her palms squirted out more sweat than she thought possible. Her skin grew clammy all over. Julia stood there, petrified as she focused on her words: "Give me a less than tragic love." Then her eyes shifted to the phrase, "Winter was not made for love." Silently, she counted two-hundred, hoping that Sophie would be gone by the time she turned around. Just as she whipped around to dart out of the building, Julia bumped into Sophie. The bird of a girl fell over and dropped all of her books and DVDs. She issued a yelp and crumpled into a moldy Latin text with the words "Amor vincit omnia" repeating all around the border. Sophie pulled herself to a sitting position. Then, looking mildly alarmed, she blinked at Julia.

"Oh, my God, I'm--are you okay?" Julia bent over and picked up the books as speedily as if she were an octopus. But the laws of gravity and her own clumsiness defied her every effort to stack the books into a neat pile.

Sophie barely uttered, "Yeah, thanks."

"I'm so sorry. I was in a hurry. I didn't see you."

"Really, it's no big deal."

"If any of the books are damaged--"

"They're fine. Thanks."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Now, if you'll excuse me..."

Sophie loaded the books into her arms and shuffled to the circulation desk. Julia watched Sophie chat with Ms. Connors, both of them mirroring each other's gestures. When Ms. Connors touched her chin, Sophie followed a few beats later. When Julia scratched her ear, so did Ms. Connors. It was almost an unofficial game of 'Simon Says.' Whatever they were discussing, an intimacy burned between them. Eventually Julia grew aware of how long she had been observing them. Annoyed with herself, she left.

Julia arrived home about an hour later, after indulging in some aimless wandering. When he father heard the porch door creak, he shut off the television. Without getting out of his armchair or even facing Julia, Mr. Carney greeted her.

"Hello," Julia echoed. Tension crept into her expression.

"Why so..." Mr. Carney paused to pick up the mini Word-A-Day calendar Julia had bought him off of the coffee table, "'Sullen'?"

"I...I'm not sullen."

"Hey, don't mind me. I'm just tryin' to be a good parent. Speakin' of which, I'm tired of all these darn phone calls about you missin' school. Who's the boy this time?"

"There is no boy, Dad."

"Look here, missy," Mr. Carney spat as he towered above his armchair, now locking eyes with his daughter. "I know why you sound so sullen. You can't fool me. Now I wanna know who broke my baby's heart."

Julia froze on the staircase. "Nobody broke my heart, Dad. And if someone did, it wouldn't be a 'he,' besides." With that being said, Julia made her way up the stairs and slumped into bed.

Two weeks later, Julia's English teacher, Ms. Bierschbach, held Julia after class. It was a quiet Friday afternoon, right before Julia's lunch period. All of the other students had charged out of the room, whereas Julia slowly packed her bag and started to drag herself out when Ms. Bierschbach stopped her. The last few lockers slammed shut and the custodian began mopping the hallway so that every opened room soon absorbed the sting of bleach.

Julia stood in front of Ms. Bierschbach's desk like a Persian statue. Her hair had lost its usual gloss and her skin appeared sallow. From head to toe, she was disheveled. 

"Julia," she said, "I saw your poems in the library." Her fingernails rapped against the desk built from plywood.

"Oh. They've put some up in the Carver Community Center, too."

"And at two galleries on Broad Street, yes. There was an article in Style Weekly, even."

"Ah, I didn't know that," Julia said dully. She shoved her hands in the pockets of her dirty jeans and tugged at the elastic in her underwear. Snap. Snap. Snap. The action stung her thighs.

"Now, I admire this project of yours, Julia. It's a wonderful idea, but you can't let it interfere with your schoolwork." 

Julia shifted from foot to foot, eager to proceed to disappear. She stopped snapping her underwear elastic when she noticed a funny look come over Ms. Bierschbach's broad, Midwestern face.

"I've been lenient in allowing you to write poems instead of essays and book reports," Ms. Bierschbach continued, "but I can't allow that anymore. You have to learn how to write seriously. Now here, take this book." Ms. Bierschbach handed her a dog-eared novel with a photograph of a mountain on its cover. "Why don't you read this and bring me a short composition by the end of next week?"

Julia cleared her throat and placed the novel back on Ms. Bierschbach's desk. It clapped against the fake wood. "I've already read this." She cleared her throat again and asked,"Now, are you saying that poetry isn't serious writing? Is it all just fluff, Ms. Bierschbach?"

Ms. Bierschbach blinked. "I--"

"Have you read Pushkin's Eugene Onegin?"

"Don't question me."

"I'm only questioning why you're discounting a whole history of writing and some of the greatest literature that exists."

The teacher began rapping her nails against the desk almost as if she were playing the piano. "I'm not. I'm saying--"

"Then why--"

Ms. Bierschbach flushed. "You will listen to me, Julia. And you will write that paper. Or you will fail my class. You are dismissed."

"I'll write that paper," Julia hissed, "And it will be in verse. Iambic pentameter even."

"That would not follow the assignment requirements." Her lips stretched into a line no thicker than a dash.

"I don't care about the requirements," Julia blurted. Her mouth stayed open a second afterwards, prepared to speak again.

Ms. Bierschbach paused before saying, "Julia, I know it might be hard to grasp at your age. You're at a passionate time now, a time full of exploration. I was young once, too. I had dreams. I wanted to--I mean, if you live long enough, you'll eventually witness the death of one of your dreams, too. But I want to ease the pain for you by warning you before...well, before that first blow comes." She wrung her hands and murmured,"You should know now that the life of a poet is unrealistic."

The fan in the beige classroom groaned like a dying mosquito. It stirred the scent of rubber cement and old textbooks and the hallway's inescapable bleach through the otherwise unmoving air. A few sneakers screeched in the hallway just beyond the room's door.

Julia broke the lapse in their conversation by whispering, "How can it be unrealistic when I'm living it?" 

Ms. Bierschbach gaped at the mawkish girl, the one buried in her dead grandmother's sweater and father's clunky wristwatch. She was so small and frail yet something so big blazed in her gaze.

Julia pivoted on her left foot like a frame out of a dance company's documentary, leaving Ms. Bierschbach with her lips still parted. 

Music should have played. Julia's humble street clothes should have been exchanged for a black leotard. The lights should have dimmed and then faded completely. But this wasn't theatre. It was life and life for Julia meant going back to planting poems.

She ran out of the school and darted straight to her bike. As soon as she fumbled open the lock, Julia plopped on, taking off into the labyrinth of brick and pavement. For thirty minutes, she went virtually deaf. All the humans, cars and other machines fell completely silent upon her ears until she reached her coveted destination.

Six miles later, she was at the park in all its spring glory. Julia chained up her bike, still insulting Ms. Bierschbach under her breath, and sprinted to her garden. Her legs, however, felt unusually heavy, as if warning her to slow down. Out of the corner of her eye, Julia spotted a head of familiar limp hair. Julia glanced to her right and saw Sophie swinging silently, with a novel in hand. Just when Julia thought her heart could not pound any harder after her furious bike ride, it dashed at Olympic speed. Julia skidded to a stop and bent over, clutching her knees. She breathed in and out as hard as she could.

Then something remarkable happened. Sophie noticed her. She had moved her owl eyes from her book for a mere instant, yet that was time enough to see Julia panting like a pig escaping from his farmer on slaughter day. Sophie slipped off of the swing and walked over to Julia.

"Hello, are you alright?" Sophie asked in a voice barely louder than a whisper.

Julia gasped. "Oh, yes. I'm--I'm fine, thanks. I just need to...breathe." She suddenly swept in a much-too-big gulp of air.

"Oh. Okay." Sophie fumbled with her novel.

Both remained quiet for a couple of seconds, until Julia bent up and looked directly at Sophie.

"You, uh, you go to Willard High, too, don't you?"

"Um, yes, I do."

"Yeah, actually, I'm the one who bumped into you at the county library a couple weeks ago."

"I wasn't going to mention that."

"Well, I, um, guess I have to routinely put myself in socially awkward positions. Anyway, I see you in the school library sometimes."

"I've seen you there, too. You're always there during fifth and seventh periods."

Julia blushed. "Those are my lunch and study hall periods."

"Mine, too. I guess we're both skipping together."

"Ha, yeah, I just came from English. I'm supposed to be in French like, well, now."

Sophie gazed at the ground and asked, "So why are you here?"

"I...um...already watched the film the teacher's showing today. 'Les Enfants du Paradis.' So I thought I should come here and...exercise. Get my, uh, heart pumping."

Sophie let out a strange laugh. "That's not true at all, is it?" Sophie's eyes moved from the ground up to Julia's. "I've seen you working at your garden before. That's why I came here today. I thought it would be best to tell you in person, on site." Sophie took Julia's hand and clasped it. "They're bull-dozing the public garden space next month."

"No, how--where did you read that?"

"It was in a tiny article in the city newspaper. And now there are signs all around the park."

"Why are they doing that, though? What happened? I don't--How could I not have noticed the signs?"

"The city's building a water park here."

"A water park? Just like that? And nobody's protesting?" Julia started wilting as she regretted every minute she had spent planting poems elsewhere in the city throughout April.

"Well, how many people do you ever see working in the gardens here?"

"Besides me and that old lady who wears the peacock feather hat and maybe sometimes her grandkids?"

"Nobody, right?"

"Not regularly," Julia muttered, as if to embarrassed to openly admit to the fact. "There's a middle-age couple who comes a few times a year. But most of these plots are...abandoned."

"That's why the city's going rid of them. Who but a few people will even miss them?"

"Shouldn't those few people matter?"

"Not as far as the city's concerned."

"That isn't...show me."

"The signs?"

"Yeah, I have to see them. Maybe there's a contact number printed on them. I can call in, I can stop this--"

"It's too late, Julia."

Julia raised her eyebrows. "How did you know my name?"

"I...I've seen you bury your poems here before."

Julia's gaze persisted as Sophie spoke.

"At first I didn't understand, but as I observed you more and more, I finally..." Sophie blushed. "One day I dug up your stuff. Not all of it, of course. There's too much for that. But I--"

"It was you."

"Me, what?"

"Wait. You're the reason my poems were on display on the library."

"Oh, um, ha, yeah."

"Thank you."

"No problem. I figured you deserved the recognition."

"It's not about me. It's about the poetry."

Sophie's face cracked into a smile. "That rhymed."

Julia smiled back, hoping that Sophie would not notice her ears turning crimson.

"I should show you the sign. Like I said, it's too late to do anything, but--"

"It's never too late." Conviction dappled each syllable.

"What are you going to do--block the bulldozer?"

"Maybe," Julia replied nonchalantly as she followed Sophie's hesitant steps toward the signs.

Sophie looked startled, unbeknownest to Julia, who saw nothing but her delicate shoulder blades poking through her sweater. The two girls walked in silence, occasionally bumping into each other. Neither one excused herself. As they continued walking, in fact, they seemed to "accidentally" bump into each other increasingly more often.

A couple of minutes later, Sophie halted before the sign. Julia, who was standing behind Sophie, nearly fell into her. Julia saved herself from knocking over Sophie by digging her heels into the ground and forcing her body straight. Sophie didn't see any of the near mishap.

"So...that's it," Sophie said and pointed at the sign. The sign seemed to glare at the girls with its formal font and serious legal language.

"I hate that shade of red." Julia spat at the foot of the sign. "It's almost as bad as construction paper blue." Now she stood directly next to Sophie.

"You can always plant your poems somewhere else."

"What?" Julia practically shouted. "Do you have any idea how many are buried there now?" She was now so close to Sophie that she could see the peach fuzz spreading across her cheeks and chin. The sunshine illuminated it to a heavenly white-gold.

Sophie stared blankly at Julia. Her lashes fluttered, like butterflies on the verge of death. "100?" she asked innocently.

"1,577," Julia said and let the sheer madness of the number convulse in the air for a moment. "I'm not even sure how I fit them all. How I even know how and where to bury them all. How--Christ, I should have the arms of Paul Bunyon by now." She grinned half-heartedly.

Sophie bent down to pick at a dry leaf that had attached itself to her stocking. "That's...that's incredible, Julia." She tossed the leaf on the ground to wither away with the others.

"Well, I don't do anything else. I mean, besides read. So...maybe it's not that incredible after all."

"Don't say that. You could have a 1,001 other hobbies but instead you chose a single one that you really love-"

"But you're the one who told me it's too late."

"It is too late, but that doesn't make your accomplishment any less valuable." Sophie furrowed her brow into a canvas of crinkles and bit her lower lip. "You must have something to remember it by."

"No, nothing."

"Not a single photo?" Sophie's voice cracked at the birth of the question.

Julia shook her head. "It was enough that it was there."

"Then let's dig them up." Sophie said it with such zeal that she dropped her novel. She scurried to pick it up. She wiped off the soil that had so quickly stuck to the book's cheap cover. The image showed a mountain covered in blue fog.

"That's impossible. You said they were bulldozing everything tomorrow. How could we...? I'm...confused."

"We might not be able to stop them from destroying your masterpiece," Sophie explained as she waved around her novel, "but we can rescue at least some of what you've done over the years."

Sophie and Julia found each other holding eye contact longer than most situations would deem appropriate. Their pupils rapidly expanded, Sophie's ringed by a soft grayness and Julia's by a vibrant green. Both looked away in embarrassment. 

"You're right," Julia said as she focused on a sparrow feather nestled in the grass, "But where will we put them all? I don't have any more space in my room. And I can't put them in my father's truck. We don't even--"

"I'll take them."

"You will?"

Sophie stepped toward Julia and asked in a voice much bolder than before, "Well, Am I 'the owl, the tree, the messenger'?" She tucked a chunk of hair behind her ear immediately after posing the question. Her thin skirt swayed in the slight breeze, grazing her angular knees, but everything else about her stood absolutely still. 

Julia gulped. "How did you know?"

"You were holding the screenplay to Les Enfants du Paradis upside-down. And I could tell by the way your eyes stayed fixed on one place that you weren't actually reading." She bore her teeth in a horse-like grin. Then she tucked her novel under her left arm, still fixated upon Julia. 

Julia bit her bottom lip and dropped her head like a drenched lower, suddenly modest. "I...I didn't think you even noticed me. You seemed so absorbed in your big, red book." 

"Well, I'm discreet."

"Apparently." 

Sophie took Julia's hand and laced their fingers together. An indescribable heat surged through Julia's arm and then shot through the rest of her body as she looked onto Sophie's lightly freckled face. The object of her affections' eyes lit up with the happiness of a bird returning to its nest after its first flight. Julia completely forgot the circumstance that led to their first conversation, and the fact that they were standing in front of the sign that symbolized the destruction of her art. Despite imminent death or perhaps because of it, Julia squeezed Sophie's hand. They both sighed. It was a moment Julia had previously thought only poetry was capable of describing.

Without even verbalizing their next step, the two girls headed toward Julia's garden, stumbling over pebbles and broken tree branches. They dragged Julia's shovel behind them, forming slight grooves in the ground and shredding worm holes. Somewhere in the depths of the park, a raven cawed beneath the azure skies.