Solanum

Tristan Beiter

September 25, 2025

When I tell you I cried, I mean
that solanums are the largest genus
in the family Solanacae, the nightshades,
flowering plants both beautiful and dangerous,
as we learn many things are—I am reminded, here,
of the scrawling of a long-gone child,
asking if what is dangerous is evil.

When I tell you I cried, I mean
I too once worried like that, but that,
like everything that remains still,
I have needed to see instead of a curse,
decay may be a promise. When I tell you
I cried, I mean I was thinking about tomatoes—

how they were thought poisonous, those flashes
of summer (though the stems and leaves can undo
as easily as the fruit can enliven). When I
tell you I cried, I mean that a blossom
may fade and remain, as she did, eventually,
and that entanglement hit me though it was neither
the first nor the last time I knew
that the story of a miracle and the end

of the world could be the same thing,
like ancient recollection, like tomatoes
laden heavy and fading, dropping down. When
I tell you I cried, I mean that I too would
stand wondering, if possible, persist as much
as memory permits. When I tell you I cried,
I mean I too would be grateful to be planted
and fade, I too would be grateful if someday,
long after my whole world—cities, tomatoes,
nightshade blossoms—were departed, I too
met a traveler and, though I could not
understand their language, they could understand mine.