she doesn’t give the plants
carbon dioxide
she gives them art
and an apology
she’s incredibly useful,
but never doing the
supposed-to-do of things
she’s the kind to ask people to
bring ponchos to parties
instead of potato chips,
in case she’s a waterfall that day
she would shrug it off to her
unpredictability
or her ex-boyfriends
drawing incomplete circles
instead of their bodies
because it was
all the same thing, to her
she ties ribbons onto
a tree trunk
so it doesn’t forget
she climbed it
and clipped a few branches
and made pencils
out of them
she pulled the lead
out of a lover,
she wasn’t a waterfall that day
but maybe still
things could drown because of her.

 

__ar.