The blue is dripping out of the hydrangeas now. They have sprung a leak and it can’t be fixed. I’ve tried to tape it, but it didn’t work. I’ve tried glue and packing them with sand and soldering them, but it hasn’t worked. The blue is still dripping out, and there’s very little left. I thought I might save some for myself, horde it for hard times, but I was wrong. A thief has come in the night and stolen the blue. He has beaten me to it.
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| Stolen by the thief . . . the blue. |
While I was busy fretting over the blue, the green was also
compromised. The thief saw that I was
busy with the blue, and he had a great amount of time to steal the green, which
he did so in huge portions. Like an
exhausted firefighter, I’ve run from one area to another putting out fires, and
while I’ve been gone, the area I just paid attention to has gotten raided once
again by the thief.
You won’t find him, no matter how hard you try, and believe
me, I’ve tried. You could set up a
camera to watch all night, and you’ll never see a thing. Yet in the morning, you will find that the
thief has struck once again. Yet again,
he has stolen more of the blue and green in the night. Once again, he has violated a sacred trust.
But there is another side to it. The thief tells a different story. He says that he is not a thief. He says that he made a bargain with the
hydrangeas, and they did not keep their side of the bargain. He says that the deal was for a certain
amount of energy, although he will not tell me how much, and he says that for a
while the hydrangeas kept to their part of the deal. But then they became lazy, he says. They stopped fulfilling their part of the
bargain. Each day they gave less and
less until he could let it slip no longer.
The thief says he is only taking what is rightfully his.
He has not told me what his part of the bargain was. He has not said what he bartered in return
for the energy. I asked the hydrangeas,
and they turned their tired heads to the sun but said nothing. That is not an answer, although I suspect
that the hydrangeas were not the only ones to welsh on the deal. It doesn’t matter now. It’s too late, and the blue is dripping
everywhere. Tomorrow the rain will wash
the last few drops away that the thief has left behind, and then the debt will
be repaid. Whatever it was, it will be
done and over, and there’s no turning back now.
