gabrielle griffis

purple giant hyssop

Nola visited a patch of purple giant hyssop whenever she felt overwhelmed. She sat under a Sugar Maple with a basket of raspberries, fingers stained red. After August rain, she and her brother dug clay in the sandpit. They swam in the oxbow, loosestrife and Goldie’s Wood-fern along the embankment. Hyssop grew by the river and in her grandmother’s garden. Cloudless Sulfur butterflies drank from their blooms. They made tea from the leaves, letting them steep, heat diffusing flavor until the water tasted like anise and honey. Ice fogged the pitcher on the back porch. Her grandmother’s hyssop had names like Liquorice Blue and Blue Fortune. Their
stalks grew as tall as men in soil disturbed by flood water. Wind rustled the branches of a White Ash tree. The neighbor’s son waved fronds over her head, claiming to cleanse her like Biblical tales. Nola wondered if cleansing would rid her of sadness, in the same way a storm cleansed stagnant water. The summer Nola graduated, she hiked mountains and biked with her friend.
They sat along the edge of a waterfall after the sun went down. Wind bent the hyssop. They talked about their futures. Nola wondered if she was like hyssop, in need of riparian conditions, unable to thrive where there was competition. She felt better by the oxbow. Her friend took their chances, floated into the world. Nola stayed. She became amused with distillation, trying to recreate her grandmother’s tea. She macerated peppermint into spirits. She wrote to her friend about how chlorophyll turned vodka green, and then yellow, and then brown. Her friend said little. Nola felt the space between them expand. Her words evaporated into silence. Winter became more difficult, the ground blanketed in white. She missed color, green and purple. She became more absorbed in preservation, her cabinets filled with herbs and spirits. Her grandmother died, and then her parents, and then her brother. She remembered the neighbor’s kid, cleansing her with hyssop. Time purged her mind like spring rain flooded streams. She thought about distilling herself. What would her essence be when the rest of her faded?

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About the author

Gabrielle Griffis (she/her) is a musician, writer, and multimedia artist. She works as a librarian on Cape Cod. Her fiction has been published in Wigleaf, Split Lip Magazine, Monkeybicycle, XRAY, Necessary Fiction, CHEAP POP, Matchbook, and elsewhere. Visit her website at gabriellegriffis.com or follow her at @ggriffiss.