The Gospel of Household Plants

On St. Francis Day, the other parish children led their pets to the altar to be blessed, but my allergies meant

our family only owned fish, which my sisters said did not count, so we brought instead potted plants

and the priest, raising her eyebrows, asked for their names. Violet, I said, lifting mine to her sign-of-the-cross hand

and she asked if I knew it was an aster. I didn’t. It had no buds, and I’d only just named it

in the car, tricked by the purple flower painted on its pot. She conjured a blessing—thrive from the roots and name of the Son.

But at home it wilted, which struck me as rude if not downright sinister: all my father’s unblessed plants jungled

with unnerving force. Their vines writhed up the sofa back, their sharp spines skived our legs. Abandoned in the house

too long, they’d greet us in a drunken mob of green, pollen all but dripping from their leaves, their shadows scaling the walls

like smoke, reminding us that they didn’t need communion to feast on the light of the world.