There are walls and there are windows,
mostly white, mostly clear but with

trails through dust carved by the rain
two weeks back, the first of the season.

I have two plants: one fern and one pothos.
I thought I could give them equal attention

but like a parent with a problematic child
I tend more to the fern, watering its soil and

misting its leaves, strengthening where it is weak
while the pothos drapes green and full of life

down the bookcase. I heard what he called me
in the kitchen when no one else was home,

said I was a bad daughter. Well, he did not
tend to me so what did he expect.

Now and then I pull a dead leaf from the
pothos. Both plants came from the same store.

(written in 2019; largely edited in 2023)