I bought a jasmine tree, stout and abundant with bushy foliage and tiny white flowers which I was assured would exhale potent smells on the night of the full moon. A magical plant lined up with astral insinuations, I was in love. The gardener installed the shrub into chocolate earth in a terra cotta tub. “Water twice a day,” he said, wiping his hands on his overalls. Of course, I said, I’ll water the thing, and never thought about it again.

Until the gardener returned a month later which is the first time I noticed the tree looked like winter.
“What is wrong with my jasmine tree?” I asked, crossing my arms in a gardener employing kind of way.
“No rain,” he said, his hands out palms up. “You didn’t water?”
Not once had I considered the plant.

After the admonishment, morning and night, I aimed the hose and showered the bugger until the grey twigs like chameleons turned green and incrementally uncurling dark leaves squeezed forth at tips. The tree and I were in a battle to show off who could create more leaves versus who could spray more revivifying water. This was a fantasia of fecundity and I couldn’t wait for the supercilious gardener to return and be awed by the return of life itself.

Then I got invited to Miami, to visit a friend. The whole drive I snacked on Fritos as I tried to think of who I could ask to water the jasmine tree. No one came to mind and then the issue of the tree was obliterated when the first person I met at my friend’s place was Sean Puffy Puff Diddy Daddy’s mama Mrs Combs, in a short movie star blonde wig and some very high heels and a stiff couture suit. As I openly stared at her, like I was meeting a narwal, I’m fairly sure Mrs Combs was eyeing my Fritos.

Days later, on the drive home to my outpost in the Gulf of Mexico a storm pelted, and for the first time I twinged about the jasmine tree, my forgotten love, and I thanked the heavens for the raindrops.