Alexa Daskalakis

The Plant That Grew Backward

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It didn’t grow from soil.
It grew toward it.

Its seeds fell from the upper air—
not dropped, but remembering where to land.
They sprouted roots first,
thin as threads of breath,
reaching down through wind as if it were water.

Leaves came last,
buried deep under the ground,
pressing against darkness
until they felt enough weight to open.

When it rained,
the roots lifted their faces to drink.
When it thundered,
the leaves below trembled,
hearing what no other plant could:
the shape of sound traveling through earth.

No one ever saw it bloom.
It bloomed upward,
into places eyes can’t follow—
into the thin distance between air and unmade weather.

And once a year,
if the world was quiet enough,
you could hear the petals close—
a single sigh
returning to where growth began:
below, not above.