For the last eight months I had a friend. She was lovely and kind and patient, and her smile illuminated my living room.

I brought my bromeliad home from Safeway on 11 September 2021, the day I moved into my apartment. I have two photographs of her from that day, one from above, one in profile. Her crown is in full crimson bloom, her leaves a fountain of deep green. A matching red ribbon gleams in the kitchen light, cradled under a spout of leaves. It seems that these are the only two photographs I have of her.

She was my first friend in an unfamiliar town. I bought her along with a hardy ivy, who resided in the bathroom but did not last the month. Eventually I augmented my plant family with orchids and a pothos plant from my parents’ house, jade clippings from my friend, and an artificial Christmas tree for the counter, but she was my first. She sat on the corner of my black coffee table, her white pot resting atop a plastic basin. I watered her once a week—always room-temperature purified water, never raw tap water. I gave her the care that any member of my plant family deserved.

I talked to her. I read once that plants grew more readily when you talked to them, and I was feeling mighty lonesome, so I talked to her. At first our conversations consisted of me saying variations of “Ooh, you are a bromeliad! What a lovely bromeliad you are,” but as the months passed by I spilled more of my secrets, my soul, into her ever-patient cup. She has never repeated my secrets to anyone, and now I think that she never will.

A month into our friendship I noticed her pups. Nestled beneath her umbrella of leaves, hewn snugly against her stem, were three diminutive bromeliad offshoots, each unfurling around their own cups. Her children. I was so proud. I learned what I had to do when the pups grew large enough, a third to a half of her own size—I would extract them, replant them, and continue her proud lineage.

Bromeliads only bloom once. One by one, month by month, some of her lower-level leaves began to brown, their surfaces streaked with a sickly banana-slug complexion. They came apart with the tiniest tug, a painless amputation of a withered appendage. With each brown leaf tossed in the garbage bin I became distraught. I called my parents, and they would say, “That’s just the way of life. You’ve done everything you can. The fact that it’s still alive is a testament to your care.” But brown leaf by brown leaf, her bushy fountain continued to diminish in grandeur as the winter passed and by the early spring noticeable gaps had appeared in her unfurled extent.

I last watered her the morning of Wednesday, 27 April 2022, an hour before I left for Los Angeles. When I came back on Monday, the jades were flourishing and the orchids and pothos were happy, but she was dying. Her leaves were all turning brown at once and her crown, once a fierce and vibrant red, was now pale of pigment. Then her entire body came gently off her roots, and I could smell what might be a fungal infection, or at least a feast of pests. Root rot. Her pups had not been spared, either. Last night I replanted them in their own pot, but they are stricken with brown witherment and I’m not even sure if they have survived.

Now what I have left is a droopy water-stained red ribbon, an indifferent white pot, an unmagical plastic basin. A small tag which bears the text Kent’s Bromeliad Nursery, Inc. “The Bromeliad Professionals” and instructions for Caring for Your Bromeliad. Three sickly pups uprooted and transplanted in haste into unfamiliar general-purpose potting soil. Two photographs from the day we met. One bromeliad body.

Thank you so much for being my friend. I miss you.