Half My Life Was the Price of His Love

The year we got engaged, Horace Gilbert fell gravely ill.

The fortune-teller said his nature was missing wood.

For a life of peace and good fortune, he had to claim the peach tree in the courtyard as his guardian godmother.

Only when the peach tree bloomed could he marry and build a home.

So, year after year, I burned incense and bathed clean, loosened the soil around the peach tree and fed it.

Hoping only that once it flowered, I could marry Horace Gilbert.

But I waited from twenty to sixteen, and the peach tree never bloomed.