The Death of a Houseplant 

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One house plant dies before the next, while the trees outside my window thrive with no caretaker at all.

 

Again, I’ve mistaken your good-nature and compassion for flirtation while footfalls pass my apartment door like  mourners at a closed casket funeral. 

 

It all appears vulgar now, I think - the cheap reproductions of expensive paintings tacked across my walls; an approximation of good taste, hollow, redundant and incredibly overdone.

 

Growing increasingly unsteady, I invite misfortune: tongue swollen, missives misspelled, all these syllable amounting to you. 

 

Even so, I persist. 

 

Measured in ounces and dosed in milligrams, I oscillate like a single breath shared between two open mouths.

 

And so I must ask: What will sustain you?

 

I’m a harvest engineered to resist pest and pestilence, shelf-stable and abundant but only tolerated given my bitter yield.

 

I mourn even the death of a houseplant because of all my hiding places, this one matters most.