She Received a Mysterious Plant

She received a mysterious plant. Everything about it was mysterious. The pot granular, sugary like Kool-Aid; a faded tuscon decored with pale blue cabalistic images, hieroglyphics reading “Anfractuous,” although she never knew this, not speaking plant. When she watered the plant—a full cup every week—as the dream directed her, the pot liquified, flowed away, exposing the rounded trapezoid of soil. And about that soil: flaked feldspar interspersed with what looked like the novelty gum nuggets sold in small burlap sacks in vintage candy shoppes, could very well be the novelty gum nuggets sold in small burlap sacks in vintage candy shoppes (for she never had the nerve to taste it). The plant itself a tattered assemblage of leftover parts. Some leaves, some succulent spines, a little evergreen. She thought spruce, maybe juniper, but she did not know much about such things. There were flowers, berries, cones, other arboreal accessories as yet unidentifiable. It was a mess, really. A collage of cast-off pieces. And did I mention the shimmering? The plant shimmered. Sometimes it looked to her like it was dancing. Other times it vanished completely, did an invisible lap around the room and reappeared almost— but not quite—in the exact spot from which it left. Such a mysterious plant. Everything about it was mysterious. Even who sent it to her.

But sometimes, if she squinted just a bit, and caught the plant in just the right light, it looked like everything she always wanted.

- Paul Juhasz