I started growing the plant when I was twelve.
It was a small thing at first, a single stem in a cheap ceramic pot I had found at the back of a cupboard. I kept it on the balcony where the afternoon light reached. Every day after school I watered it, turned the pot a little so the leaves would not lean too far in one direction, and checked the soil with my fingers. I did not know much about plants. I only knew that if I took care of something long enough it might stay.
I began talking to it because talking to Wen Xiao had become difficult.
She was always busy. Training, cooking, cleaning, checking my homework with that quiet, tired expression that never asked for anything in return. Our father was rarely home. The house felt too large for two people who no longer knew how to fill the silence. So I sat beside the pot and spoke under my breath. I told the plant about the song I had learned. I told it that I still remembered the day I said I wanted to marry her. I told it that I did not know how to say any of those things to her face anymore without the words coming out wrong.
The plant grew slowly. New leaves appeared. I took it as a sign that something could still be nurtured even when everything else between us felt stalled.
I waited for her to notice.
She walked past the balcony many times. Sometimes she reminded me to come inside before it got dark. Sometimes she left a plate of cut fruit on the table without a word. She never asked about the plant. She never asked why I spent so long out there. The absence of questions hurt more than an argument would have. I kept watering it anyway. I kept talking to it. I kept hoping that one day she would stop and look properly.
By the time I turned fourteen the plant had become a quiet obsession. It was the only place I still put the soft feelings I no longer knew how to offer her directly. The more she treated me with careful distance, the more I poured into those leaves and that soil. I told myself that if the plant survived, maybe the part of me that still loved her without sharp edges could survive too.
It did not work that way.
One afternoon I stood on the balcony and realized I had reached my limit. The plant was healthy. The leaves were green. Nothing about it had changed the way she looked at me. Nothing about it had made her ask what I was thinking when I sat out there for so long. The silence in the house felt heavier than ever. I was tired of waiting for an answer that was never going to come. This chapter was taken from g.com without permission.
I picked up the pot with both hands and threw it down.
The ceramic shattered against the balcony tiles. Soil spilled everywhere. The stem snapped. For a second I only stared at the mess I had made. Then the anger arrived, hot and almost relieving. If she would not see the care I had been giving, then she could see the destruction instead. If soft things no longer reached her, then sharp ones might.
When she came home and found the broken pot I let her believe she was responsible. I looked at her with all the coldness I could gather and said she had done it. The accusation sat between us like a new wall. I watched something in her expression close off, and I felt a bitter satisfaction. At least now she would think of me. At least the silence would be filled with something, even if that something was resentment.
Hating her became the only reliable way I knew to stay on her mind.
I leaned into it. I stopped using the old title. I answered her in short sentences. I made sure every interaction carried a little edge. If I could not be the person she softened for, then I would be the person she argued with. Argument meant attention. Attention meant I still existed in her day.
It worked for a while. It also hollowed me out.
Years of that sharpness left me exhausted. One night I stood in the doorway of her room and watched her sleep with the same tired posture she always had, and I realized the hatred had never been clean. Underneath it the older feeling was still there, stubborn and unwanted. I did not know how to give it space without being rejected again. I only knew I could not keep breaking things and calling it connection.
I began leaving the plushies. Small ones at first, with short notes written in handwriting I tried to make generic. “You are doing enough.” “Rest today.” “I see you.” I placed them on her pillow when she was out and refused to claim them when she asked. It was safer that way. If she rejected the notes she would only be rejecting a stranger’s kindness, not mine. If she kept them, I could watch from a distance and know that something I offered had stayed.
The plants had been a request for an answer.
The plushies were a way of giving without asking for anything back.
I never stopped wanting her to look at me and finally understand. I only learned to survive the possibility that she might never do so. The broken pot on the balcony remained a quiet reminder of the day I decided that loving her out loud was too dangerous. The notes and the soft toys became the private language I used instead, a long series of small, unsigned attempts to take care of the person I had once told I wanted to marry.
I was still waiting.
I had simply learned to wait more quietly.