A Bromeliad

A bromeliad in my apartment is dying. “Water it in the cups,” the plant guru had said. Now it is rotten from the core out. How many of my plant friends have I told to water the cups? They haven’t texted me in a while, and now I think I know why.

The florist guru from Milaeger’s will deadhead me for this. I obeyed every interdiction. It never propagated.

The core reeks, a moldy elephant’s foot. I wouldn’t go near it.

What the guru doesn’t know is that the giant ric-rac fern has died, and the Laelia orchid, and the big air plant, too.

Two senior cats gnaw at the dead plants. I’ve kept the two alive for a combined 24 years, so I feel sure of myself. I am sure that treating them to expensive tropical delicacies over the years has fortified their immune systems.

I have kept myself alive for some years, though I sometimes wonder. I clean the bathroom mirror with vinegar and a rag. Beside me hangs a lunar illustration in a Goodwill frame, with a cutout of a dog with the subtext ЛАЙКА ensconced on top. The bromeliad comes to terms silently with its decay in the living room.

In the mirror I am unable to come to terms with my most recent kill. Skin, heart, lungs—they all yield to gravity.

I vacuum the moon-shaped bathroom rug. Do I call the guru about a spiral snake plant or buy dead things until I myself die? I push the vacuum into the living room and turn it off in front of the bromeliad. Plunging my fingers into the soil, I yank the saturated thing roots-up. I let it fall into the garbage bin. Food for worms.

The last crumbs of soil rattle through the vacuum. I debate whether to save the pot’s dirt. I carry the pot with its dirt to the broom closet, pushing the neglected candles back on the top shelf.

written for an event for the sestercentennial