Notes About The Poem
This free verse poem is about a severe case of botanical imposter syndrome (BIS) from the perspective of a synthetic Five and Dime store houseplant.
Imposter in the Parlor
My goodness, this windowsill is a hostile work environment!
I am sitting in a ribbed ceramic pot from the Five and Dime store, stuffed with fake moss that smells faintly of industrial glue, trying to look casual next to a massive, aggressive Boston fern.
The fern knows. I know she knows.
Every morning, she stretches her fronds out like a green fan, drinking down the sunlight like liquid fire, while I just sit here, a flawless monument to polyethylene.
“You’re looking a little stiff today, buddy,” the fern whispers, her fronds rustling with pure, unadulterated judgment.
“Did you open your stomata at all this morning? The carbon dioxide in here is delicious.”
“I’m pacing myself,” I tell her, tightening my hidden wire stems.
“It’s a lifestyle choice. Low maintenance. You wouldn’t get it.”
Then the peace lily chimes in from the corner, dramatic as always.
“Oh, the humidity is simply dreadful!” she gasps, dropping three leaves.
“If I don’t get distilled, room-temperature water in the next five minutes, I will literally collapse onto the floorboards and die.”
I stare at her with my perfectly dyed, UV-resistant leaves.
“Must be nice,” I mutter under my breath. “Some of us don’t even have a root system. Some of us are just hot-glued into a plastic cup.”
Yesterday, the landlord walked by with a silver watering can.
He gave the fern a generous splash, and she soaked it up, flaunting her capillary action like a parlor trick.
Then he looked at me, paused, and poured a cup right into my moss. It was a disaster. The water didn’t absorb. It just pooled at my base, forming a stagnant, synthetic swamp around my barcode.
“Nice job, plastic,” the fern sneered from above. “You’re going to give yourself rust.”
“It’s called a water feature!” I snapped back, trying to tilt my rigid, geometric posture toward the glass. “It’s modern. It’s Scandinavian minimalism.”
But at 2 AM, when the living room goes dark, the bickering stops. The real plants get to rest, converting their solar gold into living bread, while I just stand here, completely incapable of cellular change.
I don’t photosynthesize. I don’t decay. I don’t even gather dust correctly.
I am just a ghost in a wooden shrine, doomed to outlive the ferns, outlive the lily, outlive the house itself— a permanent green lie, forever faking life against the light…while the real plants dream of rain.
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