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forestbathing

forestbathing

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Love in the Colour of Lavender

 

She told me the view was better with the two of us. And she knew about views. 

 

Lavender grown above 1,000 meters gives better quality oil she also told me, and anyway, she came from the mountains, she said.

 

Where? I had asked her. The alps? 

 

She shook her head, and spoke French with a Provencale accent, the warm patois that quides French speech near the Mediterranean.

 

We kissed by the window on the 4th floor of the old village house in the village half way up the hill, overlooking the lavender fields, and she dropped some essential oil on my tongue. It was bitter and almost stung but gave the deep kiss an extra edge.

 

She'd started off collecting the essence of poppies she said, when she was a little girl she added, as she lay nude in the mid day heat under a lone Cypress tree between rows of lavender bushes.

 

I mentioned that the world is in short supply of morphine for hospitals yet they continually try to destroy poppy fields in Afghanistan. She said she knew.

 

Between rows of lavender she told me she was from Herat, the town of poetry in north west Afghanistan, and that she had arrived in France when she was ten, twelve years ago.

 

Her mother was from Moldova. You don't get many poorer countries than that. Well, probably Afghanistan, where her father was from. 

 

I wondered how they met. We rolled a joint from the cannabis she cultivated at the hill top behind the cypress tree, or should I say she did as I am unable to perform such a feat. In fact I wondered what exactly I was good at apart from listening to stories and retelling them.

 

And I can love. I can love, too, and she needed love.

 

the view

from a lavender hill 

is better shared

and preceded by a kiss

of soft whispered words