by Shaun Lawton
Had I known the power contained in that one leafy green plant, it all may have turned out differently. I try not to think of such things, because who's to know at which twist a multiplicity of gains may have outdone whatever losses were crossed on other timelines.
Even my power of recollection begins to blur sometimes in my mind, as I can only see so far back into my memories in time. Some come slowly swarming toward me as if released from a great forgotten depth. The faces they wear always seem like strangers to me.
I remember planting the seed, but I can't seem to recall where or when I got the seed in the first place. I planted it in a brass spittoons' interior, and inserted the spittoon in a white plastic bag. Two shoots sprouted out of it within twenty-four hours. One ended in a broad leaf pointed straight upwards.
See, I had encountered a diagram on a tattered, yellowing page in this old fashioned hard bound book I discovered in my grandfather's root cellar. It was a special place I used to like to crawl into when I was a child. It had a dirt floor that extended up and out to underneath the planks of the front porch.
I loved to hunker down there whenever anyone else in the family was standing or sitting out on the front porch. Not because I needed to spy on them, nor did they ever talk or reveal their secrets anyhow, it was just a nice feeling knowing I was right there near them, without their awareness.
It was a comforting feeling that I've come to understand only after a lifetime of several decades lived, across a span of living in different states and over the course of several jobs. The first vestiges of feeling comfortable with the dead.
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