She has been fighting with the same fern for three years, and she thinks she is losing.
Look at her. Standing at the sink in the gray morning light, filling the little green watering can with the chipped spout, testing the soil with one finger the way you test a sleeping child's forehead. Too dry again. She says something under her breath, half a scold, half an apology, and I would give anything to have a thing to worry over like that. A stubborn living thing that needs me and refuses to say so.
She does not know how good her hands are. The way she turns the pot a quarter-turn toward the window so the crooked side gets its share of light. The way she pinches off the brown frond and rolls it between her fingers and rubs the green smell into her palm without noticing she is doing it. All of it, thoughtless. All of it, tending.
She sighs at the yellowing leaves like they are a bill she forgot to pay. If she could feel what I feel from here, she would drop the whole ritual to its knees and be grateful. The cool weight of water moving through her. The dirt under one fingernail. A small green thing on the sill, drinking, being kept alive by someone who woke up and chose to.
It is not dying, the fern. It is only slow. It is only asking her to come back tomorrow and do this again.
Come back tomorrow. Turn it toward the light.
Keep your hands in the dirt as long as they will let you.