I lie flat on my stomach and put my face right next to the tiny green shoot unfurling from the confines of the snow. A tiny brown, cracked seed still sticks to the top of the shoot, and I resist the urge to pull the remains of its infant prison free.

I put my ear to the ground, imagine I can hear the sound of water rushing through the roots of the trees awakening. If you hold a stethoscope to the side of a tree, you can hear the sap pulsing through the heart of the tree, deep beneath the layers of dried bark and soft wood.

I dig my fingers into the still-frozen dirt, wish myself roots, can almost feel them breaking through my flesh. I long to be a part of these green things, to be called to fold up beneath the earth in the winter to sleep, burst forth renewed and green every spring. This little plant is all I want to be. These are all the friends I will ever need.

Holly Day is a housewife and mother of two living in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Her poetry has recently appeared in Hawai’i Pacific Review, The Oxford American, and Slipstream. Her book publications include Music Composition for Dummies, Guitar-All-in-One for Dummies, and Music Theory for Dummies, which has recently been translated into French, Dutch, Spanish, Russian, and Portuguese.