Cutting Back the Garden: On Friendship, Memory, and the Quiet Grace of Letting Go.

There are pictures on my phone of flowers I once held in my hand. Bright, soft things. Bursts of pink, blue, yellow, and red. I took those photos without thinking much at the time. Just beauty. Just light. But recently, while scrolling through my gallery, I stopped at one of those flower pictures and felt something more. A memory came with it. A person, actually. Not someone I see anymore. Not someone I even talk to. Someone I let go. Or maybe, someone I had to cut away.

The poem I wrote, Flowers, came from that moment. That strange tangle of beauty, loss, nostalgia, and clarity. It wasn’t just about the flowers. It was about people too.

There are people in my life, or rather, people who were in my life, whose memories are now pressed between the pages of my personal history like dried petals. People who were once bright, funny, full of life. People who once meant everything. The kind of friendships that made you laugh until your ribs hurt, or cry in their arms without shame. People who once felt like home.

But over time, some of those people became something else. Not always monsters. Not always cruel. Sometimes just unwell in ways I couldn’t carry. Sometimes selfish in ways that hurt. Sometimes toxic in ways that left a film over everything. Sometimes just too different, too sharp at the edges.

It’s not hate that made me step away from them. It was preservation. Of peace. Of joy. Of mental and emotional clarity. Of my garden. The one I’ve been growing quietly and steadily with care.

When someone shows you that they are a snake, you don’t plant them beside your eggs. When you realize someone is a fox, you don’t leave them near the bin you worked hard to keep clean. It’s not because they’re evil. It’s because nature tells us to protect what we’ve built. Nature tells us that survival sometimes depends on pruning, on cutting back, on setting boundaries.

It doesn’t mean I don’t remember the good. I do. I remember their laugh. I remember the conversations that felt like little sanctuaries. I remember their presence at milestones. Birthdays. Breakdowns. Beginnings. They were real. They mattered. But now, so does the distance.

Sometimes, healing isn’t about reunion. It’s about soft separation. Not door-slamming. Not public declarations. Just silence. Just space. Just letting the soil rest where it was once trampled.

And I know I’m not innocent in this either. I know that in someone else’s story, I might be the snake. I might be the fox. The bad friend. The one they had to cut off to breathe again. I have hurt people too. Sometimes without meaning to. Sometimes because I didn’t know how not to. I’ve been someone else’s lesson in boundaries. And for that, I keep trying to give grace. To them. To myself.

There’s something deeply human about this cycle. The coming together. The growing apart. The remembering. The letting go. It doesn’t always need an explanation. It doesn’t need to be packaged as drama or betrayal. Sometimes it’s just a quiet shift in the light.

We look at old pictures. Of people. Of flowers. Of memories frozen in a moment before we saw clearly. And now, we tend to the garden differently. We water what remains. We compost what no longer fits. We plant again. New things. Wild things. Gentler things.

And sometimes, we write poems.

We write to say: I remember you.

We write to say: I release you.

We write to say: I am growing, still.

So if you find yourself looking at an old photo of a friend who once felt like sunlight and now only brings you storms, it’s okay. You’re not cold. You’re not ungrateful. You’re just a gardener now. One who knows what blooms and what bites.

And that knowledge is grace.

For you. For them. For whatever comes next.

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