I.

It’s Kansas, or it isn’t; there are no wheat-lined horizons or open-wide blue skies in this corner of the world, and that’s what makes Dean worry, because he knows Kansas in a way he’ll never know another place, and his heart says this isn’t Kansas, not even a little bit.

He’s tough, says Sam, he’s like a weed, you couldn’t get rid of him even if you tried, and Dean tries to think of Cas like that instead, as something that’s getting better, not worse, no matter how many nights Dean steals into his bed and tries to pull him apart.

II.

Dean can’t quite think of what Cas does as gardening, even though technically it meets all the requirements: Cas goes outside, rain or shine, and that’s part of it, and he buries his hands in the dirt, and that’s another, but that’s where the similarities to gardening end.

There’s a spot just outside the bunker, and that’s where Cas goes, but it can’t be called a garden because there’s been no real attempt to guide nature here.  it’s just a patch of Kansas’s most notorious evils: sowthistles, carpetweed, cockleburrs; pigweed and purslane; bitterweed, snakeroot, Devil’s beggar ticks.

There’s a patch of ragweed, and that’s what keeps Dean away most days, even though he’ll watch from the doorstep every afternoon, waiting for Cas to come in for the night.

III.

Weeds is a relative term, Cas says to him, once.  Humans, he says, you humans place such importance on labels.  There’s no difference between a weed and a flower, really.

Dean tells him he wishes Cas would do something other than sit around talking about weeds.  He tells Cas that Kansas soil isn’t bad for growing vegetables, and doesn’t Cas think tomatoes would be a damn sight more useful than crabgrass?

Weeds are simply plants no one has found a use for yet, Cas tells him, and Dean sits beside him and stares up into the slowly-splitting river birch that’s growing far too close to the bunker for his peace of mind and thinks this isn’t Kansas.

IV.

Mid-July, and the weeds begin to look more appealing: black-eyed Susans and Queen Anne’s lace, rocket and yarrow. 

Sam wanders outside once and starts pulling up dandelions, marveling at the strength of their taproots, and Dean thinks this isn’t Kansas.  Kansas is sunflowers and cornfields, the weather-beaten boards of the farmhouse where his mother vanished in the night, and this place is abandoned cement and steel, electricity provided by the river on the other side of the bunker’s concrete stacks, the quiet spaces underneath the willows, among the rushes and the clover and the bird’s foot violets.

This isn’t Kansas; Dean knows that Kansas is where things grow, and then they die; Cas is less and less every day, and he knows that it’s roses one day and the next day it’s over and this can’t be Kansas because one day soon all this will come to an end.

V.

November, and whether they’re weeds or wildflowers the fact is they’re gone, withered and brown shapeless things after three weeks of frost, and while Cas stares up at the stars without recognition, he falls asleep in Dean’s arms and every night Dean thinks this isn’t Kansas, but his license plates and Sam disagree.

It’s not Kansas, he keeps thinking, but then one night Cas crawls into his bed and folds himself into Dean’s arms, gives back every one of those heart-felt kisses Dean’s always thought he’d taken no more notice of than the feel of dust blowing against his face and maybe, Dean thinks, Cas warming him inside and out, maybe this isn’t Kansas, but maybe it’s close enough to count.

a selfish wish

i want you to imagine me holding your hand. 
i want you to picture us on a couch 
reading, your feet propped up
on my thighs. i want you to imagine my fingers in your hair, 
my smile against your scalp, ghosting across your cheek, 
my breath near your ear, saying “i love you” loudly
because it is no secret.

i want you to imagine us 
tired, frightened, but together, 
arguing over petty things, serious things, 
the stuff of life and death that love is made of. 
imagine us apologising after, crying after,
curling up after, with my palms 
lain across your hips, where i hold you close to my heart 
because its pounding only settles 
when it can hear the beating of your own.

if i could, i would give you the memory of all these moments
we’ve never had.
i would give you my laughter and my graceless mistakes,
all my follies and worries because i would crave every one of yours
in the same way i crave your grins, the way the skin 
around your eyes crinkles, the way you turn
mundane syllables into a song.

if i could, i would build you a home with these bare hands 
that wish they could miss your touch.