The Annex

The annex is a low prefab box the city put up in a hurry, and the vines have been at it for a year. The wall is lace: studs, wiring, pale chalk where the panel was, and over all of it variegated leaves, green on green. The flowers are open. They smell of lemon zest and static.

At the foot of the wall there is a rosemary hedge, and in the bed under the vines the Mochis come one by one, tip their flaps open, and let go of what they carry. Foil. Copper. The tin lid. The hubcap. Then they back away.

You tip your jar out in the same bed. The soil takes it without a sound.

In the one stretch of wall the vines have left whole there is a door, with a mat and STAFF in paint, and beyond it a stair going down. The first Mochi rolls over the sill, and the rest go after it. The last leaves the door open.