Your pea-green arms
all speckled and spiked
stretch skyward, leaning

lightly upon the pane
you say: See? Fragile as I am
even I have made it through.

You were a gift
given just before the door
to the desert opened

(that arid expanse
no one had knocked for).
I have kept you with me:

wondered each day
if you would die like so many others
drowned or dried up in their own dirt.

In truth, you have grown:
your three-inch pot now
crowding out those slender limbs

until you must break
and be given
like the healing balm you are.