Jade Plant
Christopher Merrill

On the ceiling
a candle has
drawn my Jade plant,
with a shadow.
Its image is bent,
and the plant looks
colossal and strong,
like a palm tree.
 
The shadow pot,
from this angle,
is shaped like it could be
a swollen clay bowl
with thick, round edges;
 
I lay still,
naked like a sculpture,
looking.
 
My Jade plant,
in its plain plastic pot,
on my dresser,
beneath its ceiling portrait,
is small and weak.
 
It can barely drink the water
I sometimes offer it.
Somewhere, I was given
an optimistic candle;
 
in a moment I will rise
and stand above it,
and I will let it draw
a portrait of me.