plantin

Allie was small in frame and took up all the air in the room with

a single crackle of laughter that bubbled over anyone in earshot.

the position she held had been occupied by several other women

like her before, and all but one had been mothers as well. I knew I

liked her the first time she teased me about the way I said plantain.

plantain. plantaaain. plantaain? plantiiin! on the days we were in

office together, the same late shifts that had us timing our calls to

other parents where they would have maybe just finished dinner

but definitely had not unwound enough yet to have time, or really

the space and patience to talk a little about their child’s program,

we would chat about this that and the other. in the middle of a

break, I said shyly that I write poetry even though it was something

she already knew. I told her how I tried to capture moments in my

waking and dreaming life in a way that I could maybe get down to

the core of an experience, to the essence of being here, beyond five

senses, something multisensorial and yet compressed into language,

letters, spaces. an exhale and then an inhale of a moment. I told her

that I wondered what that would be like and if it could ever save us,

heal us, teach us, free us?

she stood by my desk digging her small teeth into an apple, chewing

it slowly. staring way beyond what was in the room, she swallowed

the pith back like a stiff drink “…whatever the case may be, this apple

is the sweetest thing I know right now.”

Chiedza Pasipanodya is an artist, curator, and writer whose work engages with questions regarding remembering, permanence, care, and gesture. Their first book, grace: Notes on Survival, was published in 2014. Pasipanodya lives and works in Bloomfield Hills, U.S. and Toronto.

Chiedza Pasipanodya (Tristen Durocher)

“plantin” is excerpted from The Sweet Spot, copyright 2025 © Chiedza Pasipanodya. Published by Hush Harbour Press. Reproduced by arrangements with the publisher. All rights reserved.

The Sweet Spot published in May.