“tomato plant”

by Adrienne Rozells

I don’t know much about gardening. 

The salesman at the nursery

Told me it would be easy  

To start off with a tomato plant. 

My family grew tomatoes 

When I was a child 

I want too-small gloves 

To play in the dirt again. 

Tomatoes start out green.

Flowers can be so many colors 

There’s a cacophony of petals

Every time I step outside. 

Life calls out to life

Sometimes when I’m in the earth 

Things crawl along the skin of my ears

I like to listen to them come and go. 

I don’t know how it happened. 

Now I hear them all the time 

Someone took the bees from the flowers  

And locked them up in the guest room. 

Adrienne Rozells (she/her) holds a BA in Creative Writing from Oberlin College. She currently teaches writing to kids and works as co-EIC at Catchwater Magazine. Her favorite things include strawberries, her dogs, and extrapolating wildly about the existence of Bigfoot. More of her work can be found on Twitter @arozells or Instagram @rozellswrites.