[unnumbered: mysteries of brooklyn]
— Day
September 2023
[poem text:
When we planted the seedlings in June, I unearthed shards of glass from the dirt—dozens of dusty fragments from its former life. I pictured the still buried pieces suddenly wrapped in roots, tangling with new growth. As I softened the soil with sweat, my partner sheltered small shoots from the sun’s heat.
Yesterday, we stepped outside to find a single shoe standing in the middle of the yard, one lace disappearing between cracks in the pavement as if grown from the concrete itself.
Another mystery of Brooklyn: without fertilizer or stakes to climb our tomatoes managed to stretch seven feet up (and counting). Broad leaves overtook the basil and pepper plants, devoured the neighbors’ fence and every trellis we tried to add. Stubborn green veins towered so tall that when August storms came, they keeled over entirely under the water’s weight and crept across the concrete, displaying all two hundred of their tiny, hard fruits—not yet ripe.
Across the yard, a bed of weeds shot skyward, as untamed as our carefully tended tomatoes.
