Are you still here?

"That's the most surprising thing of all!" says Mohamed, observing our half-cut carrot bought in rough form, days from its harvest, bruised, nearly limp, shoved into the dirt and now sprouting. "It's blushing green," says Josh.

The last few months I haven't blogged. Would snapshots do? Arriving to a power cut, someone's spicy chicken crawling with maggots in my fridge, sending emails to a black hole, giant shoes holding my door open, the lobotomized pizza man serving my overtrusting heart the first piece of humiliation, a prescription bottle discovered emptied by a disappearing lover, an empty bed where my laptop had sat paused on a documentary, texts from the police, could I drive the suspect to the courthouse? A new home full of boxes, a man passing my windowsill, not bothering to speed up when I scream at him, my purse- a few embarrassing contents- spread out in my yard while 2 militants paw through, my own keychain dangling in the door, the sinister glance of the stray cat the day my first (last???) pet went missing, a falling lime waking me, the shadows of banana leaves waving, running everyday, the endless tallying of touting to join me, a collection of "champion ladies," and other zombie-bumster one-liners, a thrice broken fridge, so much loss back home, life-saving smoothies, pitch-perfect little voices, wine in swimming pools, bathing under a papaya tree, anticipating breaking heat.

I've always chronicled small. I assume you see in it the reflection of things bigger, if not then why would bigger matter anyway? Other people's lives contain momentous events, the ones I try to show up for when I'm not distracted, like a child, by a vegetable in some dirt, the ones cuing others on how to handle you. I don't have that construct to tell me if there's good to come, if I've learned, if I'm better for any of it. I just know you can cut apart a carrot, you'd be surprised because if you stick it in the soil, it'll grow.