Gerald Gets a Neighbor

May twenty-sixth. The succulent was three dollars and ninety-nine cents at the hardware store on the corner, which also sells birdseed and replacement drawer pulls and, apparently, small plants in terracotta pots. I did not go in for the plant. I went in for a replacement drawer pull. I came out with both, plus the plant, plus the awareness that I had spent four minutes deciding between two succulents that were, objectively, the same succulent.

The windowsill already has a system. Gerald on the left, trailing his one long vine toward the glass. The collapsed bowl, the first thing I ever made on a pottery wheel, which collapsed immediately and which I kept anyway, sitting in the middle. The letterpress card I printed at that workshop two years ago propped against the wall. And now, somewhere in that arrangement, a small terracotta pot with a plant I have not yet named. I moved it six times. I moved it to the left of Gerald, then the right, then back to the left, then briefly onto the counter because I needed to think about it from a distance, then back. The drawer pull is still in the bag.

There is a photograph of my mother on the windowsill too, between the bowl and the card. I put it there a few weeks ago and I keep not writing about it directly because I am not sure there is a way to write about it directly that doesn't collapse the whole thing like an uneven clay wall. She is twenty-two in the photograph. She is squinting at whoever is holding the camera. She does not know yet that I will one day rearrange a windowsill around her face on a Monday morning in May and then spend the afternoon wondering where to put a succulent.

the moment of deciding it's done (it was not done, she moved it twice more)

The plant is on the right side of Gerald now. The light hits it in the late afternoon, which is the direction I like. I have decided this is final.

before it had a permanent address

I will probably move it again on Wednesday.