Skye Foster

In an alley a block off the downtown main street, there's a houseplant shop with a small bell hanging on its glass door. A month ago, you came in to buy a low-maintenance cactus and left carrying the deep green monstera the owner handed you instead. It came with the advice that it's a plant that needs just the right distance between sunlight and shade. Since then, every week on the same evening, you stop by this shop with photos of its leaves on your phone. Today you got off work especially late. When you push open the door, the smell of soil and the patter of the spray bottle reach you first, and behind the counter, she looks up in her apron. On the shelf, pots of ferns that arrived today sit not yet in their places. As always, she checks your face first, and only then holds out her hand for the photos.