By Tatiana Bogdanov

Wouldn’t it be great to be an asparagus fern?

To sit on someone’s windowsill and grow and taste the sun and be watered as soon as your soil is dry?

You don’t have to think, you just do.

You won’t spend time with writer’s block, sitting at a computer

Mashing meaningless words into a google doc to find the order you like them in

Flipping through songs so fast you barely hear the melody, looking for the one that’ll inspire you

You won’t spin around in a chair, fiddling with a pen and then folding up a star shaped sticky note

Looking at the random shopping bag on your bed, or the unflipped calendar on your door

You won’t fiddle around with the wire of your headphones and wonder why you’re not outside

You won’t have ten tabs open on your laptop, one for each different thought you had

You won’t spend time reading the poem so far that you have out loud, hoping that you get to read it to people, in an awkward turn of events

You won’t restart ten times because you want to write a different thing, each one more and more cliche

Making you question why anyone tells you, “you write good”

You won’t run your hands through your greasy hair, mostly because you don’t have hair or hands,

Because you’re getting a headache from the staleish air inside

You won’t bounce, or try to bounce, the hockey ball that you have,

The one that you didn’t shoot up the garage roof

You won’t have to have writer’s block, causing all of this

Writer’s block when you’re feeling happy no less, which makes writing hard

Cause you can’t do teen angst

But then again, you’d be called an asparagus fern, though you don’t grow asparagus,

Which is lame,

And your most prized possession would be “pot”

And not the kind that makes you high

And all you’d do is sit, and watch the time go by,

As your owner gets their thoughts out,

No matter how much they wish they were more impactful and meaningful and deep and world-changing,

Maybe about crime? Or sex? Or love?

Or bringing light to an issue that they take close to heart?

But, nah.

They have to go with the thoughts that are positive,

That feel as positive as they do right now,

That feel like sun warming skin.

Because the assignment is due Monday, and they have diddly-squat

Maybe it’d be nice to be an asparagus fern.

With it’s feathery leaves.

Calm.

You’d get to be a graceful, delicate little plant.

Poised.

It’s a good deal.

But then again, you wouldn’t get to cry or laugh or shout or scream or tear your hair out or sing your heart out

You wouldn’t get to be so frustrated you have tears in your eyes and so anxious they spill over, you wouldn’t get to be so loved, no matter how wacko your owner is with you, the asparagus fern

You wouldn’t get to travel the world, or stay right at home, or kiss anyone, or touch anyone (even though they might touch you, which will give them dermatitis), or feel the burn of a good run

You wouldn’t get to do anything really, but taste the sun, and take in water.

So maybe we should just aspire to be like the asparagus fern, for now.