What I Grow on Purpose

Five forty and the kettle already knows my footsteps. I drink half a cup at the back door in yesterday’s work shirt, step into boots I don’t bother lacing, and go out while the light is still making up its mind.

The clay in this yard fought me for two whole Aprils. I hauled compost until the truck bed smelled like rain coming, turned it under with a fork that bent, then hammered the fork straight on the porch rail like a man arguing with his own tools.

Miss Ella leaned over the chain link that first summer and said, baby, you know half of that is weeds. Maybe so. I watered all of it anyway, and some of what she called weeds came up collards.

I carry dirt under my nails to church on Sunday, the kind no brush gets all the way out, and I have quit apologizing for my hands. Some beds failed me. One keeps surprising us both.

I can tell a dry week from a drought now. I know a plant will forgive you once, maybe twice, then go quiet in a way you have to learn to hear, and I check on my own quiet the same way, every morning, with water.

In August I eat the first tomato standing at the spigot, warm off the vine, juice running down my wrist, and whatever you want to call that feeling, I planted it back in March. I kept the receipts from the seed catalog.

Come October I cut open the best one I grew, dry its seeds on a paper towel by the kitchen window, and write next year on the envelope in pencil, because pencil is what you use when you plan on being wrong a few times first.

Tonight I fill the can at the spigot before I go in, set it on the bottom step where my boots will find it. It sits out there in the dark, full to the lip.