My roommate planted daffodils in little pots on the windowsill. She promised me that though they’d die each year, they’d always come back. That spring, they didn’t even bud. I watched her frown and poke the soil with the tip of her pointer finger. Something about the disappointment on her face, the slight turn of her lips and the wrinkle between her eyebrows, made me turn away.

We worked well together; we were roommates again the following year. She hauled the flowerless pots into our new room. She bought new fertilizer.

My roommate went with the passage of winter, her body laid in the frozen ground. Girl after girl came to lay flowers on her side of the room. I became the guardian of a rootless garden. I was sweeping out dead petals by the day.

In the spring all the flowers were in the trash, dried and withered with decay. I stood at the window to look at my roommate’s pots. I’d never stopped watering them.

In the soil I found tiny sprouts. Maybe it was the new fertilizer. Maybe it was the spring.