After the
snowmelt, the cracked bucket
by the
potting shed, filled with last year’s dirt,
swelled
in the spring heat. Two leaves
on a
tender stem: after a brutal winter —
in spite
of it — reseeding. Later that summer
she grows
taller than you, bushes out,
a happy
Indica, stalk as thick as a cat’s tail.
The
hospital bracelet dangles
from your
frail wrist as you reach
to rub
her leaves, and I cannot
read the quiet map of your face. Like
you,
she is something that arches for the palm
of the sun, and while you sleep, slinks
under the medicine eye of the moon,
gathering her pharmacy. We
smoke the holy
kola buds over the devouring
tumors of your blackened body,
an unspoken acceptance hanging
in the perfumed air. All
I know is nothing
is a mistake
in this world, that she is something.
