The door barely open.
Arms full.
Shuffling feet.
Everyone talking at once.
Mom had us.
All four.
Balanced the way you do
when you refuse to drop anything
that breathes.
Dad took John and me
for a second.
Just to help.
Just to prove it.
Too many decisions
happening mid-step.
Ceramic on tile.
Sharp.
Final.
Two pots down.
Soil everywhere.
Roots exposed
like they’d been caught doing something wrong.
My mother hit the floor with us.
Hands moving fast.
Packing dirt back in.
Pressing.
Holding.
Negotiating with damage.
One pot cracked clean through.
The other held
just enough
to count.
John cried like fury.
Red.
Loud.
Impossible to ignore.
That plant earned the window
by surviving the fall.
Emergency sun.
Heat straight on its leaves.
Water slipped in whenever guilt flared.
Fed more than scheduled.
Watched harder than the rest.
It leaned toward the glass
with an angry glare.
Daring anyone
to forget again.
Tori came next.
Chosen carefully.
Placed where light stayed longest.
Full sun.
Watered on schedule.
Spoken to gently,
like encouragement mattered
because it did.
She bloomed the way people like.
Wide.
Obvious.
The kind you photograph
to prove something worked.
Ellie went by the closet door.
Not hidden.
Just inside.
Dark most of the day,
but not sealed.
Sunlight slipping in
for a few hours.
Enough to warm her leaves.
Regular nutrients.
Checked often.
She learned how to wait.
I didn’t get placed.
I ended up.
That’s what happens
when your cracks don’t show.
Farther back.
Where light doesn’t wander.
Where quiet stays put.
I know I didn’t start there.
There are bends in my stem
that only come from reaching.
Proof I once believed
sunlight could be bargained for.
Now I grow where nothing brushes past.
Where no one rearranges me
by accident or ego.
I can see my mother
pause outside the door
after tending Ellie.
He checks on me
the way you check a control.
If I’m still alive back here,
the others must be fine.
And what if Ellie gets knocked over
in the reach for me?
So the door stays closed.
I learned later
the kind of thing that lives like this
has a name.
No leaves.
No obvious way to take in light.
Still alive.
It survives on what’s underground.
Systems you don’t see
unless you’re looking for them.
It blooms rarely.
Briefly.
Not to be admired.
Just enough
to confirm
the conditions are holding.
I didn’t start with thorns.
I know that.
They came later.
After being dropped.
After being missed.
After learning stillness
was safer than hope.
Now they’re structural.
Not decorative.
How I held my pot together
when the damage nicked my roots.
Not blooming.
Not dying.
Persisting.
And I don’t know
whether that makes me
the failure of this house
or the only thing in it
that survived
by design.
