I never thought I’d be so glad to see moss. I wash green across the canvas, feel the texture of the woven fibers against my roughened fingertips, calluses grating, my skin cells becoming a part of the piece. The smell of it comes in waves as intoxicating as the color—chlorophyll sweat clinging to my face like dew. My breath comes so quick it dries the paint in front of me before I’ve finished spreading it. I dip my hand back in the paint and smear it across the canvas. A few more days of warm wet and filtered winter sunlight, and there will be flowers. Flowers always follow the green, and the green always comes first.

***

The stalks all bend under the weight of shrinking blooms. Petals drop to the dirt without ever growing vibrant. The paintings all look as if they are viewed through smoke. I dab more brown along the edge of a leaf.

“Are you ever coming inside?” Natalie only speaks in oily ivy now. She casts so much darkness that I swear the plants are starved for light.

“I need to turn something in tomorrow. At least show some progress.” I rub my arm along my upper lip, wiping away the drops shaken loose by speech. Her glasses are fogged, but I feel her look. Like my mother peering out of her eyes.

“It doesn’t look like the flowers are doing very well.” She touches the tip of a finger to a limp petal and it falls.

“God damn it, Natalie!”

She turns on me, leans into her shout. “They’re not ‘still alives,’ Colin. They’re dead. You’re letting them die. Flowers need to be nurtured.” She turns away so fast that the breeze in her wake knocks another petal free.

She’s right, though. About the nurturing. Flowers need to be fed. Not just once, but over and over. I need to complete the ecosystem. I’m going to miss class again.

***

All my nails are split and my palms are a mess of blisters, but I can hold a brush.

I never noticed how many colors there are in dirt. It isn’t just brown. It’s a thousand browns, gold, green, even blue like Natalie’s hard eyes.

And ants aren’t just black, but are mahogany anywhere the light shines off their beaded bodies.

Spiders the color of dirty glass—inside a dark rainbow of organs.

Worms the color of salmon and skin, and worms the color of bone.

The dirt is alive. Still alive. Long after the flowers die. Long before new seedlings split their casing and take root, punch tendrils through the earth to the richness waiting there.

Nothing grows in dirt that isn’t moving, churning, recycling itself in the long throat of worms.

Life comes from life, or what life leaves behind, hidden in the dark center of bones. And hollow bones hold only echoes.