Experiment 108 -2021-: Christine Envall The Growth

Outside, on the campus walkway, the maples had begun to flush with spring. Students biked past with coffees and tangled earbuds. Somewhere, a gardener leaned over a raised bed and whispered to a young tomato plant as she pinned its stem to a stake. Christine thought of that whisper as a tiny echo of what had happened in her chamber: a human offering care, a living thing answering in the only language it had.