Watching My Air Plants Die
a poem?
My other plants die quickly.
Turning brown the moment they enter my apartment, unburying little white flags from beneath their roots and waving them desperately as I sit watching antiheroes argue on tv.
Other plants suck up all the water I give them, thirsty little bastards, then later inform me it was too much water, more than any plant needs.
Idiots.
But air plants
Die slowly.
They enter my apartment as tiny, rootless miracles. So trendy. So cute. So doomed. And yet.
They live long enough that I can tell my friends.
They live through one whole season of Preacher.
They live and I begin to wonder if I’m not so terrible at this after all.
And my apartment is a place where I could take a photograph and not be ashamed, where nature has entered and kissed a few corners without leaving a scar, where maybe I’m not a hopeless millennial who can’t even keep a plant alive, let alone a fish, or a dog, a bank account, or even a baby.
Maybe I could hold a baby without dropping it. Everything changes.
I name them.
