Summer is my favorite season. I especially like it at the beginning, in late June when the flowers are still in full bloom and the sweltering heat hasn't quite slumped their petals. I like that the rain stops, and the breezes become warm. I like that everybody seemingly has more energy than they've ever had before.
This summer was an awakening like I'd never experienced before. From the moment my mother had passed to that inevitable turning of the seasons, I felt like I'd been sleeping. I'd been trapped in a day dream where everything was completely out of my control. Somebody else was constantly calling the shots and I'd just been along for the ride, but that summer was different. I was on my own. I was making the decisions. It was all finally up to me.
I gave myself a routine to start every day.
I got up early and always grounded myself in the garden. I'd sit down in the dirt between two plants and I'd stretch and meditate on my thoughts. I'd remind myself that from soil came life and I'd soak in that infinite ability for growth even in the most hostile of environments. I'd remind myself how free I was. I'd also smoke a cigarette, which had nothing to do with self care. I just did it to get myself outside at first, and then I couldn't stop.
Afterwards I'd go inside and make myself breakfast. When I finished eating, I'd clean my dishes immediately. I never left anything in the sink. Clutter was trapping and I was free.
When I went to my room to get dressed, I never thought about my clothes too seriously. I never let myself consider who might be looking at them, with the exception of myself. Nobody was watching. Nobody would be following, evaluating everything about me from my movements to my clothing. I wore what I wanted. I slipped Whayas rings onto my fingers delicately regardless of whether or not they matched. I painted my nails on Saturdays.
The markets were also on Saturdays. Oddly enough that makes Saturday my favorite day of the week. I learned after a few weeks of freedom that I loved working. It was different before, when I was working due to the need to survive. I still lived well below the poverty line and technically needed to survive, so that bit hadn't changed entirely, but I was surviving on my own now. I was working to get the things I needed, but for the first time I had the ability to also think about the things I wanted without the weight of surveillance and control on my shoulders. I was working to thrive. I was working because I wanted to, and because I valued my time spent in the community.
When I was starving, my dear Penelope gave me food because she knew that it could help me. It was a simple and easy thing that she was capable of doing. She saw a problem, and she found the power to solve it. We are all powerful like that. There are always things we can do to affect the ailments of another person. It's just a matter of finding out what our power is; where it comes from and how we can use it.
Whaya taught me a lot about herbal remedies, Wiccan practices and healing crystals. When I was a child, she and I even cast curses upon those who had slighted my mother. It was all fun and games back then, but I still believe in aspects of it all, at least in small parts. Whaya was powerful. I saw it with my own eyes. I'll never deny that.
Whaya taught me to be powerful too.
I took some time off of working at the market when I was busy plotting homocide. Then I took a more pronounced break when I didn't leave my house for the month of rest that I so very desperately needed. After that month, I had some repair to do. I needed to repair my home. I needed to repair my mind and my body. I needed to find and repair some level of power.
When I finally returned that summer, it was with newfound power entrenched in the entire operation.
My new table still had some soap and jewelry and under the table pot in it, but it also had my own carved candles, herbs from the garden, and crystals collected both from Whayas things and a new supplier in the city that was young and respectably scrappy and completely willing to trade me baby pot plants for an array of useful crystals.
Whenever people approached to purchase something, I always made conversation. I watched and I listened and I read people the way Whaya taught, and then I always picked out a crystal for them to help along in their day.
Helping people. That was more powerful than anything else I'd ever done. That's what Poppy had taught me, and it hadn't even been intentional, which was maybe the most valuable part of all.
This all brings me to a Saturday in late July. I was at my table speaking to a customer when he approached the mercantile. I felt him coming. I don't know how to explain it other than that I'd woken up that morning to ground myself in the garden when a single tiny gray rain cloud had appeared in the sky. I'd watched it move by, heavy and gray without dripping it's moisture. It had stood out against the deep expanse of blue in the cool morning sky. I'd noticed it and I'd thought that maybe it meant today would stand out. Something would come. I just had to wait.
I was speaking to a woman. She was buying a beaded bracelet from me in bright colors. She was telling me it was for her girlfriend that she'd done wrong, and that the bracelet was an apology and also a promise that she'd do better. I gave her a small rose quartz for free to see if that could help repair things. I told her to think of harmony and love.
"Thank you so much," she was saying to me. "I'm going to keep my eye out for you in the future, I promise. Next time I need soap, I'm coming right to you."
I didnt have the heart to mention that I was only going to be making soap for a little while longer. I really was starting to hate the smell. It wasn't that it was a bad practice, but it was just one I'd latched on to during a time of fear and desperation. I was under the control of a fascist dictator. It was not a decision made in freedom, and so it wasn't one I could live with forever.
"What did you say your name was?" She asked as she was turning to walk away.
"Basil," I answered, which was the newest title. That's same day I'd also used Sage and Dill.
The woman nodded and left and I finally had the chance to look up to seek out the energy I was feeling in the air. It had been hovering, quite like that cloud did. Then I saw him.
He was standing back a few feet, seemingly in respect to allow me to finish that previous transaction. However, now that she was gone, he hadn't moved to close the distance. I immediately sensed some type of nervousness in him.
Ryland Brookes, who had asked me to call him Riley, was standing with his eyes angled downwards at the ground, like he'd looked away to avoid staring too obviously before. Behind his long sweeping eyelashes, his eyes moved slightly, just enough to let me know he'd gotten lost in thought while waiting. His hands were clasped infront of him. They were so tight that his skin was pulled white between the joints. His shoulders were rigid. I remembered the odd confidence when he'd kissed me. Before my heart could flutter too much, I remembered how his eyes had looked dewey and wet after he'd cried. The kiss had been salty with leftover tears.
"Riley," I heard myself say his name without reservation.
He looked up sharply, like my voice had jerked him out of some sort of choppy sea. Immediately I saw more of the boy that kissed me and less of the boy that cried. His posture straitened and his hands unclenched. His soft pink lips curled into a smile.
"Basil," he said with interest. He stepped forward all the way until his hips were almost pressed to my low table. I noticed his jeans were a size too big. I had to remind myself not to look that direction. "That's what you told the lady anyways. I had the learn your name secondhand by eavesdropping. Do you know how hard it's been to find you when I forgot to ask your name? And you weren't working the markets apparently? I thought you were avoiding me."
He laughed like he found that amusing, but I heard the edge. There was a nervousness in Riley, that was so evident if you just paused and listened for it. I thought about googling him, which was something I'd maybe done several unnecessary times while laying in my bed for a month. I thought about the things I'd finally found, and what had happened to him infront of the world. I could tell you all sorts of horrible sins and abuses that had been committed against him, but I won't because it's not my story to tell, nor is it my business. Instead I'll say that Riley had been served too many unfair cards. He wasn't an actor anymore. As far as I could tell, he was just a Riley, and he was living in Portland so that he could be that singular Riley in peace. I thought of that dark cloud I'd seen that morning and I wondered how difficult he was finding that peace to actually reach.
"I wasn't avoiding you," I said, my voice pleasant and cool. I looked at his hair. He'd seemingly gotten it trimmed recently. The curls were more tamed, although still down to his chin. I liked how the light touched it. I reminded myself to look at his eyes, warm and brown like a doe. "I can promise you that."
His nervousness gave way to another smile. I marveled at how easily it could pop onto his face like that, given the cloud. He was a marvel. My stomach fluttered violently. I felt like I was coming down with an illness.
Riley kept smiling for a moment, and then seemed to remember words existed. A docile look fell onto his face. He tried to stop smiling, but the seriousness only reached his eyes. His lips stayed curled.
"I have to apologize," he said, almost sheepishly. "For kissing you, I mean. Not that it was bad! I just mean that I didn't ask before I did it... well I sort of did. It was unclear. It was probably surprising, and— well, you know what I mean, right?"
I watched him rock on his heels with nerves. His fists were clenched. I had to stop myself from launching over the table and kissing him again. I immediately felt embarrassed for that thought.
"I didn't mind," I promised him. I kept my shoulders back and my face confident, as if the butterflies in my stomach weren't openly threatening to end my life while I spoke. "You're welcome to it any time."
"Noted," he said with a nod. Then he looked back up with a serious face. The smile was actually gone. "But I still think people should ask first."
"Noted," I echoed his words, and where he'd gone harder, I softened. I thought about what I'd read. I thought about the lawsuits and the criminal charges and everything that had been done to him. "I will certainly keep it in mind. Don't fret about that, darling."
Riley's smile came back. In all the time that I'd know him, it would be like a pattern or a game for me to try and return that shape to his mouth. Riley would fall in and out of smiling, and even in that moment of newness between us, I'd see the challenge. I'd see how I could make it do the curve I was so infatuated by. He made it easy. He made wanting to make him smile enticing.
"I appreciate it," he said casually. "Anyways, I was very high when I met you."
"I noticed," I concurred.
"I'd like to proposition you for sex sometime when I'm not high," he explained, and I could tell he was trying hard not to laugh. I assumed the laughter was directed at himself. "Would you still be interested, or is this the part where you actually reject me?"
I kept my posture regal when I responded with, "I think I'd quite like that, actually."
"Riley! What the fuck man?!" A third voice intruded, and then walking up to us was a blonde man of whom I now knew was called Percy after doing some research. It helped that Riley had mentioned him by name while calling him a prude. He was the one who'd come to retrieve the beautiful sleeping visage of Riley during our first encounter. The internet also told me he'd moved here from Los Angeles with him. He was also an actor, and he was currently in college. They'd acted together as fictional brothers, but the internet told me they were truly as close as brothers in real life too.
Riley backed away from the table by a full step. I looked at how Riley stiffened and looked nervously to the approaching man, like a child caught acting out. It wasn't quite so feeble though. He looked nervous in the same way I looked nervous, like butterflies dancing in my stomach, except for Riley's butterflies were sad. Devastated really, and also aware of how misguided they were.
"Now I'm going home to my roommate who also won't sleep with me," he'd said.
I was immediately jealous of this poor man, who did not even know me.
When he reached us, he looked at me apologetically, and for a moment I wondered if he could read minds.
"I'm sorry," he said. "Is he bothering you? I told him to stay put for like two minutes and then he just ran off." He looked to Riley, who managed to stop looking flustered by his arrival. "Why are you bothering people? Poppy got a muffin ready for you and then you were just gone."
"I told Poppy I wasn't hungry," Riley mumbled, significantly quieter than he'd been when speaking to me.
"You went out last night," Percy said, and he actually sounded quite reasonable, like a chastising parent. I thought it was kind of an inappropriate way to speak to a friend. "You came home out of your mind, and you blatantly told me you hadn't eaten all day. You need to eat something. I'm actually begging you."
If I was Percy, I wouldn't have been exposing Riley's personal activities like that infront of a stranger. Then I recalled Riley talking about how Percy had implored him to stay away from my corner of the market before. I wondered if Percy was judging me. I didn't really get that sort of feeling from his presence, but I was aware that he wouldn't have approached me if not to retrieve his friend. I put that thought in a pocket of my mind. I chose not to give it too much energy in the same way I didn't give energy to wondering how my clothes would be perceived each morning. I did not go out seeking for the approval of men who wore buttoned shirts on Saturdays.
"Penelope makes excellent muffins," I supplied, my eyes now fully on the beautiful Riley's furrowed eyebrows and not on his very obviously heterosexual and clueless friend. Riley's eyes flicked back to me. I kept my face poised in its expression. His eyebrows unfurrowed.
"Fine," he said, looking back at Percy. "I'll eat the damn muffin."
"And he's having dinner with me tonight," I voiced, my eyes still on the Riley. "At my house. I'm making him dinner. That means you'll eat twice today. Right, darling?"
Riley used to be an actor. That's how I explain the way he seamlessly acted into my narrative. He was smiling smugly at Percy as he nodded. Then he was smiling at me as I relayed the address.
"Look for the broken gate," I told him.
I gave him a carnelian stone as he went, and he was looking down at it in his palm as he walked off with the heterosexual in tow, likely on his way to retrieve the pastry from Poppy. The butterflies in my abdomen were no less settled than they'd been before.
It wasn't until I was cleaning up my table for the day that I truly realized the gravity of everything I'd just allowed myself to step into. Reality and obligations had simply slipped my mind. Those problems were for another version of me. Not for this one. Not for Basil.
Basil comes from the Greek word for royal. It is said to bring balance between your body, mind and spirit. In this phase of my morning quests for balance and peace, Basil was an excellent descriptor.
I thought about how it had sounded when my name came out of my Riley's mouth. As I carried my items home with my overflowing bags, I thought I might never change it again.