Plants she touched withered.

Let’s not be dramatic: she wasn’t death incarnate. Life is rarely so theatrical, even if she preferred it that way. A beauty in tragedy: like she were a narrative, to be staged or contained on a page. Legible.

But humans were messy. And she was, if nothing else, most humanly human. No immortal death-god here.

Her touch desiccated, that death of not-enough. Vine leaves curled and browned, stems dissolved into dust, as though she sucked out their water through the whorls of her fingers. A flood of her own. She wondered what else might get caught in the crossflow—and whether it spoke of the collapse underneath.

Maybe her pores were too large. Maybe these mouths—or wounds—beckoned the water forth. Come, they called. Wade in this topography of skin. There’s so much space for you here.

Maybe it was also her thirst. No matter how much she drank, her throat soured, and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth when she tried to speak. Words came out dry, like a husk, if they came out at all.

Doctors said it was a lack of potassium, or maybe excess hidden in her brain. So they fed her roots and beans, told her to pay attention to the rise and fall of her chest, to listen to the beat of her feet striking the ground. To just sit still, damn it, and be. As though that wasn’t the hardest ask of all.

Their frustration only confirmed her fear: there was something quite humanly wrong with her. Something that perhaps made her more human than most.

Maybe that was it: she was the most human, and in that she couldn’t help but leach the marrow, sap the juice of whatever vegetation she touched.

But she wanted to make things grow. She wanted to germinate, cultivate something outside of herself. Her partner couldn’t understand this, that want for what lay beyond her grasp. How her consumption consumed her. Then again, it wasn’t a trait he shared. Plants responded to his touch, grew broad and verdant under his care.

They surrounded her, his abundant rootlings. Vines hung down her walls, leaves with veins fine as feathers climbed across books and shelves alike. And as long as she didn’t touch them, they grew.

She told them stories, watched as they filtered her words clean. But sometimes she brushed past, like when she opened a window or pulled book from the shelf. Too fast, she’d see droplets suspend in the light, transfixed in horror as their water soaked her skin. Glistening, like called to like.

She’d try to water them, overcompensate for the theft of her body. But the more she watered, the faster they depleted. A river’s journey from vein to vein. Inevitable, and no amount of coaxing could prevent their drying once it began. If she leaked, her body became thirstier, she learned to keep her moisture where it belonged, let the salt dry on her cheeks. Guilt, a useless thing.

She returned to keeping a safe distance—her sign of respect for their space. What everyone needs.

They did not blame her, no more than they blamed the beetle for chewing their stalks. Beetles do what beetles do, after all.

And so she caressed them instead with her words. She told of a witch who spoke to vines, cajoled them up, up into the clouds, thorns thick as a ladder. She told of a woman who spoke only in flowers, each breath sweet as honeysuckle or jasmine, petals fluttering from her lips.

And she told of the child of moss, shunned and excluded, who fashioned companions after themself, both them and not. A clump from the knee became a dog; a bit from between the toes grew into a rabbit. This fragmenting and splitting of self was all fine and wondrous until the child decided to make a new playmate—but perhaps that’s a story for another time.

The plants listened as she spoke. Or at least, they did what plants do: breathed in the toxins she released, danced and shook to her words. It wasn’t that they grew better—no judgement or morals here—but their context changed. They softened the air, held atmosphere in place.

It was as though the plants soaked up wrongness, visitors noted. Maybe they’d learned something from her stories after all.

But still she wanted growth, wanted to mother something separate. Not hers necessarily, but what might be cared for beyond speech. Alluvium to hold.

This desire pressed upon her. She felt it in her throat, worried the plants heard it in her voice. That maybe the sediment of her speech would harden them, wear them down like a scar. A current we’re pulled into though we don’t remember falling into the river.

And with this heavy silt coat, her thirst overwhelmed. She began to panic, worrying her mere proximity to the plants might be enough to yield their waters. What if she grew in power the more she felt?

Her head pounded, and she stumbled into the kitchen, craving distance between herself and the rootlings. Maybe if she could sit down, drink, possibly eat something—maybe it would ebb on a tide of its own making.

Back against the wall, she opened the fridge, blinking against the unfiltered electric.

Little was there: a few cans of sparkling water, some stale bread, a rind of cheese. She tried to remember the last time she’d gone to the store. The cheese was probably half-covered in mold, anyway.

A pause. Her fingers sought out the tupperware. Opened, the vinegar of wild surplus stung her nose, alternating clusters dappling its skin blue-green. The fur waiting. Beckoning. They were beautiful, and vibrant, growing like the untouchable.

She reached out a finger. Let it hover. Stroke the air around the oiled marble. It didn’t shrink, and she didn’t grow slick with other’s labor. She swore it pulsed instead.

Her hand trembled, but she held. And those million tiny fibers reached, connections built one to another, and they touched her right back.

The caress of acceptance: she was part of them, now. They had taken some of her, those parts she didn’t need. A few dozen skin cells, some oil, her salt and other secrets. It was how they spread understanding, taking in others to grow. What bare sacrifice she offered to touch something beside herself.

She knew she couldn’t keep them in the cold anymore, no more than she’d leave children in a snowbank—that is, not without good reason. She needed them close, somewhere safe and a little warm—she wanted them to thrive, after all.

So she put them in jars under the bed. Maybe they’d feed and feed off her dreams, that mineral difference that shimmered in the salt of sleep.

A few vessels to start: they were hearty, enough to be broken, they could handle the space. She hoped more would grow from the many, thriving in her darkest layer of self.

She kept accumulating, always searching for what else they might grow into and out of. The beauty of multiple being the possibility inherent in how more made more.

She started to notice them elsewhere—the bruise of a peach, the sponge of bread. Sometimes it was just their potential, a question of where they might yet hang ganglia: reaching outside of themselves.

She gathered these others. And in this gather, they became what was not other. More and more jars collected beneath her bed and cups and mugs and bowls until the carpet clinked ceramic and glass.

Little by little, she fed them, taking pieces they might like, small offerings of novelty. They accepted, ate all, became. And them became them.

Her partner didn’t notice—though not secret—or if he did, he didn’t say anything beyond suspicious mumbling. She smiled to herself. If he had his plants, she’d have her mold.

But eventually she ran out of containers. And she wasn’t about to go buy more—nothing generative about disposable design, after all. And maybe the mold didn’t want to be contained anymore. Maybe now was the epoch of spread.

So she began leavings in the between, as though she might coax them from their glass and ceramic homes. Help them journey outward, ever outward, reaching towards what was not but yet to become.

Because for them, what was other was never entirely other. It was just not them yet. Where the drive to distinguish cannot be sustained in the passing of chemicals back and forth: what language attempts but can’t grasp. The messaging of touch, wherein acts mark all parties, not  same but catholic, embracing roots long since forgotten. This was their seeking, mouths open, for what might become them, by kiss and bite.

Their intimacy spread and joined, growing into others’ touch, not vying for space but knowing they had enough. They carpeted underbed, drawing salt from her dreams, cushioning her wakingness. They nestled into the floorboards, stretched between cracks and darkest crevices—down, down—tasting for water everywhere.

And she slept better, no longer disturbed by creaks and groans as her partner tossed in the night. They muffled talk to calming murmurs, dissolved nightmare tears in their cocoon of breath.

Her partner slept better, too, and so he said nothing when he swung his feet over the bed to find them thick and further, refusing border laws. Their plushness reached up for him, touching him back, easily bearing his burden of weight. They took some of him, too—nothing he’d miss. No payment but reciprocity in this mutual aid.

And in them, she and he merged, a becoming at the cellular level what intimacy reserved for specific times and places. That even after, when coated in each other’s oil, there was always a question of what might break the barrier of skin. The infusion required for penetration. How salt lingers above surface. When to sustain means destroy, as in break into composite parts.

But they took it, salt and all, as sustenance.

And they kept growing, reaching, spreading to the base of walls, then climbing up, up, scaling texture. The more ground they covered, the easier they advanced—so much food in air if only they looked. And they, all mouths, searched always, surfacing until the apartment collaged pink-blue-green, gray and white, brown, all the colors that could be simply were. A matter of impression.

Of the walls they made tapestry, the ghost of narrative haunting margins just beyond her vision. A future yet to come, held close in chrysalis of mother gleaned from his and her salt.

This was the story of becoming, of what might yet be when other is not other but connection. As in the grasp of reach, center being everywhere.

Do you feel them yet?