Scallions, lettuce, carrots,
All things my mother used to grow
Beside the window in the kitchen
That faced our backyard.

“It’s so easy,” she would say,
“You just put them in water
And they regrow.”
Just like how the tulips come
Out from the ground each spring.

The tulips gleefully sprout
As if there wasn’t just
A thick blanket of snow above them
Only weeks ago.

Even lizards, starfish, and sea cucumbers
Can regrow their limbs,
Like the scallions did after my mother
Gave them a haircut before dinnertime.

Each time they were cut,
They would grow back day by day
Until it was time to be cut again.
As if they didn’t know their predetermined fate.

How beautiful it is, to relentlessly regrow
No matter how many times my mother decided
To make scallion pancakes,
Or use them in stir frys or soups,
They reappeared on the windowsill.

Reaching upwards to the sky,
Jubilant to simply exist and
Bask gloriously in the sun
Even though they could smell
Their predecessors being pan-fried alive.