Kathryn Petruccelli

Plants are friends. The kind you love—a little too much—with a love that’s confused, conflated, fits in multiple categories. Plants are like the kind of friends you have as a young child, an insecure teenager; the kind you want to prove your love to. The ones whose houses you go to and realize they live completely differently than you do. The kind that are mysterious, that you can’t believe your luck in getting to be with, but that you can only get so close to, that can turn aloof, that can abandon you, but that you’ll defend without question. The ones that break your heart.

In my piece, “The Smell of Nasturtiums,” the speaker meanders through feelings which parallel these early days of unsorted emotion and peppers in a little fierce mother-love, even if the object of her love has blood we don’t share. She’s trying hard to find the language for this scent that begins as only experience. If she can pin it down, perhaps it’s more hers. 

Love populates “Dwarf Citrus” as well. I’ve written for PHQ previously about the importance of place for me. Here, the speaker is torn between the possibility of having what she loves join her in a place that’s not native to either of them, and the harsh reality in the chances of success within such a scenario. 

To pretend to hold a second place within the one 
we occupy. The expanse of love mapping the heart. 

If only every friend loved us back in a way we recognized as love. If only we could keep all we love close and have it thrive.