Dear May,

You are so beautiful. No matter where I am; in Asheville or in Chapel Hill, your irises shine bright as the twinkle of sunlight off Jordan Lake or a smooth icy cold pool on Flat Laurel Creek.

Your bluets are blushing with a joyous periwinkle hue,

columbine nodding in coral and gold –

Your lizards are scurrying: anoles, skinks, and more whose names I don’t know

turtles are recharging their sweet, cold bodies on hot, dry logs over opaque, brown water

and I am lost in both awe,

and an allergy-induced haze of high blood sugar.

You know it’s weird – allergies – inflammation – our body’s interaction with the environment – with the first kiss of sun – but year after year, the first week in May is a blood sugar roller coaster.

I get what I like to call, ‘false highs’, because I feel ok at first, but I’ll be stuck, way up in the blood sugar clouds, heavy with rain. Then of course that number starts to weigh me down, stress me out, the sluggishness compounds and I feel like doing nothing more than sitting in the midst of a garden full of peonies and tulips burst open into past-bloom and maybe wild roses and a bit of hyacinth although to tell you the truth I don’t like the smell of hyacinth but oh the honeysuckle and the proud plump snapdragons!