#fourth ward

Lisa Jones runs to the front door of her house carrying a pot of wilted ivy. On her front porch, she looks it over for signs of green. Then, she hurries back inside and emerges with another pot, this one overflowing with a tangle of green plant limbs. “No, not my son’s plant,” she says over and over as she checks it for signs of life. The plants are memorials to loved ones lost. And after a morning when they were stuck inside with an exterminator dispatched to handle the bed bugs that have been pestering Jones day and night, the plants are in a sorry state. But they’ll make it, she thinks, as she tenderly looks them over on the porch.