You had high hopes for the plant labelled easy-care from Ikea. Bought two of them before spring cracked open. The timing wasn’t right, but there was a sale. You left them out on the patio and one day the air dipped and you read about it after: April’s record low. You try every day to bring them back to life, but they’re already gone. All efforts are like placing ash on a dead body, trying to cover up the smell. This weeks-long attempt at CPR gave you time to mourn, some time to grieve yet another thing you’ve murdered. You’re practically a serial killer, this last stroke of inspiration now the scene of a double homicide, and everyone who drives by knows; they can tell from the brown, the way each branch weeps, some snapped in half by the accomplice who will never get named, only you. The last straw is when you decide to prune all the decay and brokenness—something like one step back, two steps forward—and when you are done, mad with ambition and pretend garden shears, you step back to admire your work. A sculpture if you squint hard enough. In a few months, there is a garden in its place; the killer reformed by an inmate: “If you want to be happy for the rest of your life, make a garden.” That summer you forget about shortcuts and hacks, forget time, find yourself in the weeds and stay there.