Unknown Variety

Simone arrived with a small paper packet and placed it on the kitchen table the way you'd place a piece of evidence. 'I found these,' she said, which is a complete sentence if you don't ask any follow-up questions. I did not ask any follow-up questions. We opened the packet.

They are seeds. That is the full extent of what we know. The packet has a label but the label is for a nursery that apparently no longer uses that particular design, which Simone determined in about forty seconds on her phone while I held one up toward the window to see if looking at it closely would tell me anything. It did not. It was a small beige oval. Very committed to being a small beige oval.

She stopped at the windowsill. They always do.

At some point Simone drifted toward the windowsill, she always does, eventually, and stood there with the packet still in her hand, not saying anything about the arrangement, just looking at it the way she looks at things she has been thinking about before she says she has been thinking about them. The cord was doing its shadow thing in the morning light. I watched her from the counter and did not say anything either. It was a good amount of quiet for a Thursday.

Nobody knows what kind. This is fine.

The seeds are in a small glass dish on the kitchen table now, which is not a plan, just a location. We are agreed that if they turn out to be something enormous, a gourd situation, a pumpkin emergency, we will deal with that in spring. This seems like the right posture to take toward an unknown variety. Plant it and find out. Probably a metaphor. I'm not going to be the one to say it.