Against all the odds that day he received something from his grandma. Out of the many objects and scattered memories around her place, she decided to give him something that could be easily bought in every gardening store: a bunch of houseplants. Nothing more, that’s all she left him.
He wasn’t disappointed, it was just unexpected; as the only heir of the family there were so many more things he could have inherited but she explicitly wrote him a letter saying “you can take care of them like I did in the last years. If you don’t, they will find a way to take care of themselves”.
“How could a plant take care of itself? A plant is just a plant” he thought. “If a plant could actually take care of itself there wouldn’t be gardeners, farmers, arborists and so on”.
That question run through his mind for a second and vanished immediately after he realised how silly those thoughts were.
Once at home he placed the pots around the room, trying to make it look nicer then before, when the only once-green thing was the small Christmas tree that now, without its needles, resembled a brown human-made antenna.
Due to the dimensions of the studio the green tenants had been placed where there was some empty area left.
He lived in a studio consisting of a room with one big window at its end and a small bathroom; the kitchen was in the same space on the left wall facing the entrance, and a bed was squished between the kitchenette and the window. Not a lot of space but enough to live.
One plant was placed in the corner of the room close to the door, waiting for the sun to move the warm stripe of light that everyday was penetrating from the window and advancing from the right of the room to the very left end of it. She was not alone, many like her were around the room: some were on a bookshelf, some on the floor, some on the wooden table that finally had more than just papers and books.
At a first sight they looked fine and the overall view of the surroundings was pleasant: lots of green bushes stood up against the white walls and the atmosphere was surely cosier than before.
Everything there was pretty quiet since their keeper was always outside and nothing would disturb them except for the weekly shower that would help them survive in the white dusty room.
“They are doing fine” he thought one day right before leaving the house.
But at a closer look they would reveal their solitary state: they barely knew what being touched felt like far from those outdoor plants that were always moved by the wind, plants that could feel the cold and the changing of the seasons. Struggling sometimes, but still free.
And dusty was not only the room; the leaves were covered by a layer of grey particles that gave the house’s vegetation the aspect of something still and ancient. Round, ceramic walls were surrounding and enclosing the plants, isolating them and their roots from the other counterparts that sometimes, if less fortunate, had plastic pots.
Were the plants intended to be a mere decoration for his house?
Were they waiting to be freed and let grow outdoors, where they “belonged”? Were they just waiting the time when their leaves would start fading and dry, slowly turning yellow and then brown like the soil they’ve been holding onto so far? They were powerless, they were just plants. Maybe they felt lonely.
After the first months of their staying they became part of the house, not so different from a chair, a lamp or a fridge. Over time he stopped paying attention to them. The only distinction between them and the furniture was that they were alive and sometimes, if he was away for some days he would notice their subtle movements, trying to stretch their stems and leaves towards the only source of natural light in the room, perhaps attempting to escape that prison.