The Life and Times of a Houseplant
The green tendrils of the sprout you are cannot escape these terra-cotta confines,
Because the bus doesn’t stop in this botanical graveyard.
And though its tracks innervate the ruddy ground,
like the mighty roots of a long-dead oak,
the train doesn’t stop here either.
You were not meant to make it out.
Your leaves stretch upward and to the sides,
A tangle of grace moving toward the glowing sun.
Your future.
The pot just wasn’t designed for it.
And it’s not even you as a person or plant,
it’s just an inconvenience of your existence.
Unlike the others, you were meant to grow,
Fertilizer bag.
Watering can.
just not that much,
Pruning shears.
Lilla Bozek is a sixteen-year-old from Newmarket, New Hampshire, USA, and state champion of the 2021 Poetry Out Loud competition. Their works explore identity in the modern age through a semi-whimsical lens. When not writing poetry, they enjoy other pretentious stuff, like indoor gardening and Wes Anderson films.
