Air Plant

Today I am feeling detached.

A common feeling for me. I got an image in my head of an air plant glued to some chincy magnet thingy stuck to a refrigerator. You know the kind. The ones that have the name of some place and are meant for tourists to buy, but aren’t really convenient for tourists because there is this living plant glued to it which may not need anything to live, but probably won’t survive being crammed into a vacation suitcase.

Sometimes, like today, I feel like that’s me.

No roots. No earth in which to be rooted if I had roots. Just sort of glued to a refrigerator magnet somewhere, strangely alive though no one waters or feeds it.

They are really called epiphytes. Of course my little image brought on an urge to research the interwebz and, yes, epiphytes they are. A kind of bromeliad to be even more specific. But none of that really matters. It’s just more random information to which I have an incurable addiction and talking about them as bromeliads brings to mind inappropriate images of lush tropical rain forest fecund and dripping with life.

No.

None of that is what I feel today.

Today I feel silvery and dry and glued to a refrigerator magnet.