“You’re from the south, what’s that plant?” I asked.
I knew he’d know. He knows everything about nature—way more than I did. It sprouted in my backyard, rose up from a crack in the sidewalk, something coming from a broken nothing. At first, it looked like corn or wheat—a thin stem with wide leaves—but I knew neither grew here in the middle of Chicago.
“I can’t tell until it flowers,” he admitted. “I need to see the whole thing. Right now, it’s a weed. Let it grow and then get back to me.”
So, I let it. The weed grew and grew and grew, the stem becoming thicker, taller, and multiplying with each passing week, enough to block the back door from opening all the way.
I didn’t want to cut it down. I needed to know what was blooming and where I stood. So, I waited.
When balls of seeds formed at the top, you knew. Sorghum. But you didn’t know where it came from, so I learned on my own: stray birdseed.
We said so long to summer, and as autumn knocked on our door, the sorghum had to go. Just like you, it spread its seed and left.
And it doesn’t come back once it’s gone.
Katelyn Dunne is an alumna of University of the Cumberlands. She hails from and currently resides in Chicago, Illinois. Previously, she has been a Managing Editor at The Drowning Gull, Associate Editor at Zoetic Press, and Student Editor at Pensworth. Her writing and artwork have been published in Pensworth, The Albion Review, NonBinary Review, Aurora, The Poetry Marathon Anthology, and several of Z Publishing’s anthologies. In her spare time, she enjoys attending Catholic mass, eating vegetarian entrees, teaching a classroom of enthusiastic toddlers, and working as a children’s librarian.
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