My Aloe has bloomed five times since I replaced the yellow walls of Timothy Dwight College with the white walls of my apartment and relinquished the weekend mornings spent lying in bed with the windows open to the warm magnolia breeze, listening to the sounds of frisbees hitting the disc golf basket and children playing with dogs and students in the courtyard.
The whiteness – of the walls and the plates and the noise coming in through the window – is softened only when paired with the off-white sloth stuffed animal you brought me to ease the loneliness of college that made it feel like a moral wrong to let you go, the brown-on-white letter you hand-wrote, and the pale green frog you crocheted to resemble me. I hold onto the brushed cotton sweatpants you bought me like I hold onto the notes I took in high school geometry, even though the motion of putting one foot forward, then the other, then again and again for year after year has worn holes into the inner thighs. I now know that my future house must be browns and yellows and greens on the inside, with a wooden porch for my Aloe and the peanuts I will leave out for the crows. My future plates will be the ceramic glazed ones at the vintage store with ducks in relief, the vintage store where I bought a card with a bird’s nest painted on the front and wrote you a love letter and lost it and cried. That was the only time my prayers for finding treasure at the vintage store were answered. I have not yet found a lemon-print dress, nor a pair of Prada boots.
(2025-03-03)
Zoe Pian 