I only kept showing up in the ground until it grew, the way the hardiest things always do, in the places you’d stopped tending, without your permission, because life, it turns out, wants to live even more than we want it to, and will seed itself in the least likely soil if you will only leave the gate unlocked.

Next spring I’ll put in the beans earlier, and I’ll get the tomatoes right, and Sal will pretend to be surprised.

I’ll be there at the fence in March when some other lost soul stands outside it not knowing how to come in, and I’ll lean on my hoe, and I’ll say the only wise thing I know, which is the thing Sal said to me: You gonna stand there, or you gonna come in and let the ground teach you? And I will hand them the hoe.

And I will keep them from quitting before it does.

THE END.