Speaking only in commands.
“Your rosemary’s dying,” she said to me, and lifted the tired, browning plant from the windowsill. Rubbed a couple of now-brittle needles between her fingers, separating them easily from their stem. “It needs more sunlight.” I thought of those stats you hear that most murders take place between people who know each other well. Crimes of passion.

But here it had only been a week since I’d carried this plant home from the Farmers Market and already we were at killing, at life-and-death.

I had brought it home to live, but now I was preventing it from making its food. And there was no sunnier place in this small flat, than where I had placed the arid plant. It could not stay here and survive.

There was something that separated me from these plant people, these people who sprouted vines from their fingers that then ran around windowframes and flowered and made their living places living places. It was the same thing that separated me from people who trained dogs and horses. A certain lack of control that the leaf, the hound and the mare all saw and knew. To do anything in this world you just have to believe you’re doing it and soon enough, it’s done; but with me and plants and puppies, I caught myself up in the amazement that these were mine to care for. If I screwed up, they’d die.

Simply put, I cared too much. I cuddled the baby mutt I shared with my ex and the next thing I knew, he’d scratched up the couch and eaten my favorite hat. I tried creating distance, as the trainer directed. I tried speaking only in commands, but it was too late: the dog knew I loved him best. I tried commanding the plants, as well: the ivy, the herbs, I watered and sunned, no more singing, this time. Only: grow. Grow! But they withered, beyond my control.