CLAUDIA ROJAS

When reading this poem, view in landscape mode to keep the line integrity.

Growth and Conditions  

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Under my roof, I’ve seen green life arrive at an ending to its story. 
My mom was given a basil plant once. We had dreams for its condition,  
the multiple uses in the kitchen. Soon, the stems dried and the leaves   
yellowed, and though I’ve witnessed death in small roses, the scene  
was unexpected. I once kept beans in soil for months, and that one time, 
several seedlings rose. Too thin, they leaned and shrunk. What an injustice. 

Was it not enough or too much water or sunlight? What just  
proportions would save these plants? I open cold history. 
Maybe it was the soil or the temperature? Those times 
with too many unknowns. A low income can’t create ideal plant conditions 
like an apartment with a balcony or a ground floor. I miss the scent
of green. I’ve said goodbye to cactus and succulent. I’ve clipped pothos leaves

and praised the growth of roots and the tint of a new leaf.  
My bean plants were born without my attention. A quiet justice. 
Out of the soil, out of the seed coat, extraordinary and sensational: 
a cotyledon. A seedling shaped like a question mark for all the stories 
that end without closure. Finally, a miracle in my room. Conditions  
that merit growth within hours. I tracked the beans at every free moment. 

At one point, six bean plants at 12 inches—so thin the times  
became less promising. Winter arrived. I worried. By December, leaves  
and stems dried. One plant remains. No amount of unconditional 
care will be enough. The last one standing can lose. To justify 
this destiny, it was never about how much the plant desired to live a story 
or how much I desired life for the plants. I can’t manifest and affirm sense 

into a plant living in an unforgiving environment. It makes no sense. 
Apply this another way and one can picture how monumental 
numbers of black, brown, and indigenous people are dead or dying, story
after story. I’m reading a self-help book right now about how one leaves 
behind poverty. All I have to do is manifest, think like a rich person, just
like that. I can’t be the only person noticing the success is at times conditional 

(white, male). Not so much to manifest but to condition
yourself to grab without consent. To take NO as nonsense. 
Did you hear a man built a yacht so big he requested adjust-
ment to an ancient bridge to accommodate its departure date? 
For the record, I pray that yacht becomes a mangrove, never leaving. 
It’s necessary, always, for ordinary people to shape the earth’s history. 

I want the record to accurately reflect the conditions. I tried every time
green appeared in my everyday scenes, and even when it leaves,
I am trying to transform justice into a verb for a story that’s mine.

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