Back to the Garden

The castle is long gone, of course. The bricks went to another family years ago, when the builders outgrew them. The knight commands student housing now, and the architect of the doll shelter designs for clients with fewer fears of heights. The garden looks smaller than it does in the story. Gardens always do.

But I never managed to stop seeing it. Every boardroom where two parties fight over the last bricks while sitting on everything the other one needs: I see two kids with their backs half turned. Every flared gas plume, every dark office tower at noon, every dataset dying on a server next door to the company that needs it: the same garden, the same fight, the same small pile that looks too scarce only because nobody has looked at both buildings at once.