There’s something nice about letting the hot water run through the coffee for a full 40 seconds, when it blooms in the phin, expanding outwards in the metal circle. I listen to the drip, like water from a canvas awning after it stops raining. I pour another thin line from the kettle that makes the coppery water rise slowly with the steam.

 There are other quiet moments, like when I turn the vacuum off after cleaning my apartment. I move the coffee table to reach the rug. The glass of water on the table at the edge of the room, near the radiator and the windows that swing open above the flowers that I try to keep alive — and if I'm lucky the buds open in red, purple, or white. It's always a surprise when they do, and it feels good. It's satisfying when it rains and I can naively picture the plant's inner workings, the water rising within tubular stems and pushing new flowers open for me to see when I wake up – or at night – the colors against darkness, the wild green stalks absorbing nutrients across window boxes. I imagine what it'd be like if a flower were oversized, filling my entire window with a single color and illuminating my room like a buttercup does one's chin, a petal filling like a sail in a sudden breeze, the kind that detach cherry blossoms in the spring and send them flying down the street. The crickets with their pulses and thin continuous sounds, like prize wheels set into motion and spinning until morning. I check on the flowers before going to bed.

I just watered them with the yellow can with an attachment that water falls from softly in arcs, making tiny rainbows. I returned it to its place underneath the rain barrels on the stone patio. I can see beads of water on the empty stalks by street light or the moon. I'm not sure if they can bloom at night, but it does seem like it.