I Took the Plant Out for a Walk

By Mehreen Ahmed

At midnight, someone was knocking on my window pane. It was a sinewy twig, wavering in the blustery winds. Knocks persisted. The window had fogged up from the recent cold waves. I walked up and stood before it. A coal spattered night, there was the twig rubbing itself on the fog. This reminded me of Grandma’s fantasy metamorphosis of the moon shadow; that it was a woman, sitting and spinning for a thousand years. 

Spirits breathed through leaves.; grandma had often said before she passed away, now buried in a graveyard downstairs. What was it, the twig? It nodded and said something to me. The fog on the window cleared up, to be re-fogged. I kept looking at it until the twig left a sign on the fog, as though it breathed onto the windowpane. It stirred, I walked to it and wrote the letter G on the breathing. The twig stopped stirring. That was the sign; the window pane was all fogged up, but not from the cold wave. The twig took roots where her body had been laid once. This conduit, red with blood housed new veins. Photosynthesis and metamorphosis had shaped her into new life.