I leave the sun and I am on the leaf, no gap, no journey, the green thing catching me at the exact instant the sun spat me out, and both are the same instant, and I am delighted. They tell me eight minutes passed in the black between. I was not there for it. I have crossed the whole cold nothing and felt no width to it.
The leaf drinks me. This I understand: I strike the wide flat green and the plant folds me into sugar, my one bright life spent building a stem taller by an atom. Good. I was made to become a leaf. I could not have asked for better.
But the warm creature. The warm creature stands at the window with a small can and pours water into the pot and then, and then it does the thing I cannot picture: it waits. It sets a little cup on the sill, glances at the numbered face on its wrist, and expects the green thing to be bigger tomorrow.
Tomorrow. It plants a seed and comes back in weeks. Weeks. It has arranged its whole self around a later it cannot touch, a not-yet, a stretch of dark it must sit inside without arriving.
I have heard of this. Duration. The inside of the gap I skip. I am told it is where they live, the creatures, in the middle of the eight minutes, patient, dimming, holding the watering can and hoping.
I cannot hope. Hope needs a next. I only have the now where I am struck green and gone.
I leave the sun. I am the leaf. I am already the sugar.
Grow, slow warm thing, in the time I will never have.