What We Planted
BY CHELSEA B. DESAUTELS
Everything takes time. The Sweet
Joe Pye Weed we planted four years ago
is reseeding only now.
Nearly summer in Minnesota
and the air is full of wildfires
from another country. I keep my daughter
inside. I keep myself inside.
All the pointed leaves catch smoke.
And the dog stirs. I keep longing
for a life I’d imagined I’d have but don’t
ask me what, exactly, it was. My husband
has gone into the air and I stand
at the counter peeling a clementine.
Small fruit, seedless, a little space between
skin and flesh makes it easy to take
apart. How can I be so ungrateful? We chose
the plant most likely to thrive in shade.
We chose the life most likely.
Putting Down the Dog
BY CHELSEA B. DESAUTELS
A lunar eclipse. Tomatoes ripped from their stalk. I went wobbly. Better than a day too late, the vet said. The choices we make for the dying. On the dying’s behalf. The old cottonwood that snapped in the storm. The rawness, the softness of it exposed, what I’d expected to be jagged. What I expected to be sharp. Strangers came with black bags and paperwork. She did not want to lie down. The day I filled the truck bed with mossed granite. Then the noise from the ground when I, sweating, hoisted the rock from the bed and let go. The scratched bed without the rock. The rock, taken from the hills. The hills. The indented hills. Her heart was filling with liquid. She was not a simple being. I have never loved anyone well enough.
