MICRO

March

By KAROLINA LETUNOVA | 12 SEP 2022

I don’t tell this to people, but I buy orchids at Trader Joe’s when I’m sad. Google says to cut the stem after bloom. Clumps of leaves crowd my house. As a master I’m lax, no fertilizer, erratic water. Two bloom again this spring, a pink one and a lemon one, which sends its spike sideways. Is it supposed to do that? My spouse asks, when I point it out. But I don’t consider this a failure. The first of its faces looks curious on the probing stem. Nobody’s forcing it to bloom upwards. You’re not a soldier of an orchid, I say to its face, do what you like.

Karolina Letunova was born and raised in Western Siberia. She has an MFA from University of Michigan, where she also taught creative writing. Her fiction is forthcoming in the Kenyon Review and Nurture and is a 2022 finalist for the Chautauqua Janus Prize. A 2020-2021 Zell Postgraduate Fellow in Creative Writing, she's grateful for recent residencies at the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts and Monson Arts. She’s currently at work on a novel.