Divided Three Times

The spade goes through the root ball with a sound like tearing cloth. You lift out half of the fern with its soil, set it in the jar, and press the soil down around it with your thumbs.

The half left in the bed stands crooked. The cube moves over it and hangs a hand above the cut, turning. At the cut edge, in the open soil, a frond is unrolling. You watch it, and it does not move, and then it is taller.

You hold your phone over the jar. The fern: Divided three times, from a fern on Philomena. You hold it over the cube. The cube: No record.

You carry the jar out through the gate. The cube stays over the ferns, in the shade of the fence, and does not follow.