PLANT LOVER: Part 3

MONSTERA DELICIOSA

A sometimes erotic series about the relationships between plants and their human counterparts

-by Lina Piskernik

He picked me up while we were both riding the 1-train uptown. I had been forgotten by a girl who drank too many bottomless mimosas at a drag queen brunch somewhere in Hell’s Kitchen. Apparently, a friend of hers thought I would be a nice birthday gift but had not counted on the birthday girl blacking out on public transport and leaving me behind.

Plenty of people saw me and left me sitting on the subway seat. I had already accepted that an MTA worker would find me and throw me in the trash, but at the 50th Street station a man sat down next to me. He let out a tired sigh and looked over at me. The exhaustion was shown clearly on his face by the dark rings beneath his almond-shaped chocolate brown eye, but his sight didn’t waver from me, and then he smiled.

“Well what is this,” he asked softly, so only I could hear above the rumblings of the subway car and the loud music of break-dancers performing in the background. I tried to stretch out my tired, dehydrated leaves to show off my clear availability for a new home. He smiled at me and picked me up. Admittedly, he did check my leaves and pot to make sure that there were no bed bugs abound. One can never be too careful in New York after all. I wasn’t offended because I was too grateful to him for picking me up and showing me even a minute amount of kindness. By the time we made it to 96th Street, I was securely sitting on his lap, gently moving my leaves back and forth beneath his chin, an admitted flirt attempt that didn’t seem to offend him. I hoped that he would lean towards me a bit more, so that I could feel his body heat but then it was time to get off on 181st Street, in Washington Heights.

 He carried me effortlessly to his home; an apartment that he was sharing with his little teenage sister and mother. A wave of warm humidity hit me as he opened the apartment door. His mother was bent over the stovetop to cook dinner.

© Lina Piskernik

“Bradley,” she exclaimed as he walked in the door and holding me out to her proudly, “You need to stop picking up trash and bringing it home! What if it has BEDBUGS?!”

I was admittedly hurt by her exclamation but understood her annoyance with her son. Apparently I was one of many things that he would usually bring home. I felt a bit deflated, realizing that I was not so unique after all but tried to stay hopeful.

“Ma, she’s special,” Bradley retorted, “Look at those leaves! So large but with these holes in them. It’s beautiful!”

“It’s a Monstera! Everyone on Instagram has these nowadays, idiot,” retorted his little sister, barely looking up from her phone for 10 seconds. 

Bradley rolled his eyes, gave another world-weary sigh and took me to his room. He set me down on his nightstand and there I stayed for months. He watered me as he whispered sensual phrases like “You really like that room temperature water, don’t you?” Sometimes he would put on a playlist of bird noises for us to listen to together, pretending that we were in the jungle where I had originally come from. 

I would watch him while he was sleeping and with every growth spurt, I would try to grow closer in his direction. All I really wanted was for my leaves to interweave just the tiniest bit with his halo of perfect black curls. I longed to be on his lap again, like the day we first met, but he chivalrously gave me space. Nevertheless, I continued to grow and my leaves became larger, until one day I could finally caress his cheek as he was sleeping. 

He didn’t feel my gentle touch at first but then he slowly opened his eyes. I stopped moving, thinking that he must be stunned. I guess, it was a bit creepy to caress somebody in their sleep, but instead of shock or disgust Bradley opened his eyes and smiled at me.

“You’ve gotten so big, babe” he said, and if I weren’t made mostly of chlorophyll I would have melted right then and there. “Time to give you a new home.” 

© Lina Piskernik

The last phrase shook me to my core. “A new home”? Was he meaning to give me away? Maybe he had a girlfriend at work and he would gift me to her like some common orchid that was sitting in every grandmother’s window nowadays. He hurriedly left to get ready for work, leaving me alone and confused.

Bradley came home later that evening, having abandoned me to my own pessimistic thoughts all day. He carried with him a large plastic bag that must have been the size of his entire upper body. Bradley placed the bag on the floor and pulled out a much larger clay pot, a bag of dirt and a pole covered in dried moss. 

I could feel the chlorophyll rushing from my stem into my leaves, slightly darkening them. I suddenly realized what was finally about to happen!

He carried me from his bedroom to the bathroom where his sister was doing a video make-up tutorial in front of the bathroom mirror. She saw the two of us together, rolled her eyes and begrudgingly left to give us space. 

Bradley gently placed me in the bathtub next to the large clay pot and began to dig his fingers into the fecund earth surrounding my root system. I loved the feeling of having him so close to me. He was bent over me, sweat forming above his eyebrows as he was concentrating on manoeuvring me out my pot. As he finally lifted me, he held me with one hand and gently brushed away some dirt from my roots, causing a tingling sensation in my stem.

“There you go, darling,” he sensuously whispered to me as he placed me in the new pot and started pouring the fresh dirt around my roots. His face was rubbing against my leaves and his sweat was dripping down his nose, rhythmically hitting my leaves. He patted the earth down to ensure I was secured in my new home and finally pulled the large moss pole out. 

I shuddered as Bradley’s sweat was still dripping down my leaves and my stem. He placed his hand in my dirt again, gently probing to find my roots, going deeper and deeper into my fertile, moistened earth. I had never felt more connected to him than I did at that moment. When Bradley was assured that he would not hurt me, he inserted the moss pole into the prepared, wetted void of my earth. He tenderly patted the surface of my earth to guarantee that the pole was stable. The job was done and I felt that I was entirely his. He breathed out an exhausted sigh of relief and I would have done the same if I were of the same species. 

Bradley washed his hands of my dirt and carried me back to his bedroom. He placed me back on his nightstand, where I could continue to watch over him as he slept, played video games or simply looked out of his window over the Hudson River.

He left the room to take a shower and rinse himself of me. My stem and leaves leaned against the newly implanted moss pole, an eternal reminder of the connection that Bradley and I now had and forever would have.