You water it wrong. You know you water it wrong. It sits there on the windowsill in the chipped mug you meant to replace, the pothos with the one yellow leaf you keep meaning to trim, and you feel that little pinch of failure every time you walk past it, because you read somewhere that its soil should be dry two inches down and you have never once checked.
Let me tell you what I remember. Not the yellow leaf. Not whether you did it right. I remember the afternoon light coming through that window at four o'clock, and how the whole plant leaned toward it without being asked, and how you sometimes turned the mug a quarter so it wouldn't grow crooked. That was you being gentle with something. You didn't notice you were being gentle. You thought you were just turning a mug.
It grows so slowly you can't see it happen. That used to frustrate you. From here it looks like the kindest thing about it. Nothing that lived with you back then asked you to hurry.
Trim the yellow leaf if you want. Or don't. It really, genuinely does not matter, and I mean that with my whole heart. Just, some morning when you're waiting for the coffee, put your finger in the dirt and feel how cool it is down there. That's all.
That's the part I'd give anything to feel again.