the light of the reason and the passing of the sky

In 1994, when T moved out of the apartment building across the street from mine, he left a plant in my care.  It was a split-leaf philodendron and I was meant to give it back after he completed his move.  I broke up with him shortly after that - partly because I was bothered by the amount of time and energy he put into doing his hair, but mostly because it troubled me that he had begun to bring out something unkind in me, some part of me that wanted to test him in a clinical and detached kind of way.  There were other, more complicated reasons of course.  Of course I still loved him, but I do not find that especially significant because there are many people I still love that I also left, or who left me.  It happens all the time.  Love comes easy to me, and I make a better memory than I do a roommate.

But houseplants, I believe, are like engagement rings; you should give them back if you break up.  However, I never returned the split-leaf philodendron.  It wasn't that I was trying to keep it from him.  There were things we did give back: he returned my raincoat (minus the hood), I returned his Roy Rogers guitar.   But the plant stayed with me for some reason, and seventeen years later I have it still.  It has lived with me in many cities, through many stages.  I became attached to it, not because it was T's plant, but because I like plants, and because it was hardy and did not easily fall victim to my mistakes the way the Boston Ferns always did.

Now I correspond with T occasionally, and almost always with a pang of something regrettably indefinable.  I still feel that I could injure him intentionally, yet just one sentence at a time.  (This is not his fault; it is entirely mine.)  I know I should return the split-leaf philodendron but I do not know how to accomplish this without his noticing.

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