He makes things grow like

rosemary, a priestess in a backyard bed. Like him, she never lies. I like rosemary. He likes the frustration of dill. Too easy to court, too free to tame. He might pickle the fickle nomad if she comes back next year. He named the rosebush Olenna, lady of literature, pink-cheeked and hardier than anyone would suspect. He strokes her branches, wonders at her discoloration, loves her first May bloom like an offering. He likes to know she’s still there. She likes the dignity of her placement, a throne with a peeling storage shed tapestry for a backdrop. I like his cheeks, pink when he invites me to walk the garden, to understand rebirth.

I like the glide of his Wusthof through a firm, Golden Gate Roma, juices pooling on bamboo like a sun-fired Pacific bay. He likes to feed me things he’s grown. I sip Beaujolais and thank the gods for fertile soil.

The pothos I had sitting on the windowsill wrapped herself around a cactus in a desperate attempt at planticide, suicide in plant terms, or to finally feel the embrace of another depending on how you view it.

I carefully unraveled her stems trying to avoid getting hurt in the process, she lay limp without her support.

I made a note to find a new spot for her where she could lean on a bookshelf without the temptation of self-harm or lust. How can you hurt yourself with the touch of another? With someone ’ s skin or their hands on your own?

The first time you touched me in your tiny bedroom in November, under your gray sheets on the night we first met. How clumsily you grabbed my body before you memorized every curve and ache.

Is it pain that I feel when I think of your hands? or bitter yearning?

Maybe the last time you hugged me outside of my car in Norwood, it hurt to separate. Whether from your cold touch or the fear of never feeling your arms around me again.

I am not sure when thoughts of you stopped soothing my rapid brain and began to prick at my anxious skin.

I am sure I should separate my plants before they kill each other in the winter sun, before the other’s touch is the last thing their skin remembers.