“Can I take the rest of this?”
“You can have as much as you want. Do you know how easy that is to make? Ridiculously uncomplicated,” I said.
“Ridiculously uncomplicated,” Ming repeated.
It’s leftover rice, soyrizo, and delicious cruciferous garden leaves. Wow, so good.
I called Ming a cold-hearted chard spurner. I never called anyone that before. We laughed because it’s so ept. Apt, I mean. He’s anti-chard lately. I love chard.
Did you know I hate oleander? I hate oleander to the point where I used to fantasize about digging it out of people’s yards, in the night. That was some intense plant-hate.
I said, “Oleander is a plant people plant when they know nothing about plants.”
I also said it’s landscaping filler for people who lack imagination. Median clutter. Fakeass soulless plant crap! Uuugh!
Then we came here, and oleander grows in the driveway. I was like, eh. It’s not so bad. It flowers a lot. I like when the petals drop. It’s better than no plant at all, right?
I once had a friend I loved. They said they wanted to get married on the day the appletree flowers dropped their petals. Thought for a minute it might be me.
Then all was lost. So now I cry around this time of year, for the life I couldn’t bring into being. The white petals are falling in a breeze, swirling on their yard and house and body. They look up and see the magical snow-like opposite of snow.
I hope they found an appropriate wedding person. I never made it back there.
Mother’s Day is a pile of fallen petals, for me. The petals did their job, as a landing place for bees, and now they’ll scatter and go back into the earth.
Living moms can be very beautiful. I know not all moms are good, but love them if you got them.
The best thing about my mom dying is I only had one, so she can’t die again. The worst thing about my mom dying is I only had one. And I miss her.
