When She Dies, My Mother Wants to Be Planted as a Tree

We have this plant—his name is Benvolio. He lives 

in our giant kitchen window, which is so old

and inefficient that someone before us painted it closed. 

We named him Benvolio because Shakespeare doesn’t kill 

Benvolio. We’ve almost one-upped Shakespeare’s 

body-count twice by carelessly leaning against the 

window—Benvolio’s leaves stick in our hair, we pull away, 

he decapitates. But a succulent’s broken bits grow just as 

well, so he shares his pot with Mercutio, his friend reborn 

as a star-shaped green thing. We’ll have the full cast by the 

time we learn to stop killing our plants. When she dies, my 

mother wants to be planted as a tree. We have this bamboo. 

It lives in our living room on a high shelf, where watering 

requires balance and precision. So high off the ground that 

our hair won’t ensnare its leaves. We have this bamboo 

because it is difficult to kill. We’ve killed jades, avocados, 

mowed the tulips by accident, forgot to water the bleeding 

heart, crushed the lawn with a CAT and a de-limber to 

prevent the neighbor’s tree from crushing our roof. This 

bamboo drinks slowly, soaks up water from the rocks where 

its roots twine, so slowly that forgetting is the only option. 

When she dies, my mother wants to be planted as a tree. We 

had this tree. Well, she did. It replaced another, one whose 

missing stump still leaves a darker dip in the lawn. Her 

grandfather planted the new one for her, and the apples that 

sprang from it each year inspired poems from her and 

poems from me and pink pink applesauce for everyone. 

After over a century of continuous memory, our family left. 

Now, someone who isn’t related to us owns the house, the 

lawn, and technically the tree. It couldn’t move with the 

boxes, the vinyl, and the dirt.

When she dies, my mother

wants to be planted

as a tree.