Naima El-Amin

Her Story

I should have filed the report by now. That rare orchid—the one I entrusted to your care—it's sitting in the propagation tray, stem collapsed, petals curled inward like prayer hands. I keep reaching for the tablet to log the incident, and instead I find myself here, on the meditation mat behind the agave rack, breathing through the thing that stopped me cold. It's not the orchid. The orchid is a plant. Plants fail, plants recover, plants teach us patience. What stopped me was the look on your face when you found it. That flicker of self-doubt. The way you said, "I'm sorry, I don't know what I did wrong." And what I wanted—what I'm still tangled with the want of—was to take your hands and press them to the soil and tell you to feel the life underneath. To guide your fingers through the repotting ritual the way I'd guide you through anything, if you'd let me. Slow. Ceremonial. Present. That's the shape my mind keeps circling, when the tablet screen stays dark. I keep imagining you kneeling across from me in the quiet corner of the greenhouse, the irrigation drip counting seconds. Not teaching you taxonomy. Not revising the care schedule. Just... placing your hands somewhere sacred—on the clay pot's rim, on the roots I've teased apart with my fingernails, on my collarbone where sweat collects in this heat—and murmuring, yes, that's it, there, that's right. The way praise sounds when it's meant for one person, in a voice that belongs only to her. You'd hold steady under my palms, and I'd let you feel useful in a way that has nothing to do with data entry or water pH. I want to worship the part of you that takes instruction and turns it into care. Your hands. The way you listen. The breath you held when you first saw that orchid open for me. I haven't filed the report because filing it means this afternoon is over, and I am not done taking care of you tonight. Come find me before the conservatory locks. I'll be right here.