The Last Cup on the Windowsill

In April our teacher gave every one of us a paper cup, some wet earth, and three sunflower seeds.

We wrote our names on the side of the cup in pencil and put the cups in a long row on the windowsill.

On Monday I looked at my cup. Nothing.

On Tuesday I looked at my cup. Nothing.

On Wednesday the boy next to me had a thin green line in his earth, and after that everybody was looking at his cup and not at mine.

By the following week there was something green in almost every cup on the windowsill. Almost every one.

“Give it time,” my teacher said. “They don't all start together.”

In June we carried our plants home, and the windowsill was free again — one long empty shelf with a single paper cup at the end of it.

I left mine where it was. School was over. I didn't think about it much.

In September I walked past that classroom on my way to a different one.

There was a photograph taped to the door: a sunflower taller than the window, growing out of a paper cup, with a name written on the side in careful pencil.

It was my name. I never saw the flower. I still have the photograph.