the green with no name

aureli

她用腐烂的根系编织出土壤

挖掘自己的尸体完成生命的接力。

The green cradles her

The green feasts on her

She digs it

And she makes it her own.

God. She’s a plant with a history longer than my own. But my words have not had

power before her until now.

The plant has no soil - only water, sterile tap water - until she built one out of rotten

roots. A green shroud of algae has created a cocoon-like membrane around the roots,

leaving the rest of the water clear but sedimented with waterborne stardust. Inside the

quiet green film swirls a murky darkness that has consolidated itself into the ancient

scape of decay before anyone started to notice its multiplicity. The green is one so

profound it emulates Summer herself. The green, scarred by streaks of white - that’s

where the new roots cut in. The young, trembling roots - tenuous as fiber yet soft as

sword - entwine with the previous versions of their dead selves of which they feast

upon, bound to one day emulsify their own deaths in the dark.

And yet the leaves - oh, the leaves - how they flutter in the wind! They used to weep,

but not any longer. They used to weep, but not any longer. Even Saint-Saëns’s Swans

pale before their grace. Their delicate stalks carry a totally distinct shade of green, as if

they were jade smoothened by a creek, but only jade that’s been kissed by life, that

yields unforgivingly to the penetration of the Sun’s radiance. Each stalk that thrusts itself

into life hoists one and only one blade of leaf, which is shaped like a heart and is not

less fragile than one, and yet refuses to bow, like the head of a crane. Their down-

curved beaks no longer weep, as I’ve mentioned, but years ago they used to seep a

clear, toxic substance - seductive, but dangerous.

The plant carries five distinct stalks at a time during the summer, three or four in the

winter, no more and no less, though in its younger years it carried only one (a detail I

wouldn’t have known without the accidental encounter with some old photos). Their

array starts vertically up before fanning downwards toward the sun, so that you may see

the youngest leaf, young and delicate; then in front of it the second youngest leaf,

sharper and more vibrant in color; then the middle leaf, wide and proud at its prime;

then follows the second oldest, broadened and profound with its stalk already parallel to

the ground; then finally the oldest, stooped and yellowing, yet its head still held high

until the very end. The cycle repeats astoundingly fast if you neglect it as I do, until you

see your own shadow in what *she* lived for thousands and thousands of times - and

you would beat your chest realizing it’s too late.

What I’ve typed tonight does not cover even half the sanctity the plant holds in my heart.

No, never my plant - I never earned that pronoun of possession; I was *bound* to bear

the witness of her silent greatness, and whatever late acknowledgement I conjured up

in the middle of the night invariably fails her still, I would say. I don’t even know the

species name. The plant has no name. It has not been honored, or memorialized, or

loved. It just is, just like it was and has been for the past twenty years or so, drinking

and surviving and weaving a myth that no one cared to read. Somewhere in me I hope it

outlives me. But also, in me, something primal tells me to fight. To live, as it’s the only

way I may not fail the plant with a strange refusal to die.

You apparently never flowered, never propagated, never reproduced. Shame on you.

Tomorrow i will wake up and live in a world without you. Who will be “calm and strong”

with me?

Twenty years is a long time. Longer than I have lived— for now. It’s how long a cat lives.

You are my cat. My most beloved little cat.

But still I don’t think im ready.

I’m not ready to believe that, when you go, you go so small, just like how you came.

Tiny. With one leaf. So delicate. So delicate still.

Given your age and your resilience, i thought you will sprout again and again and live.

Shame on you.

But I’m proud.

Because I will live on. Even if you won’t.