No one warned the Cordyline when Malang’s soil decided it was done pretending. That morning, a single andong merah stood sideways in its pot, not toppled, just… refusing the vertical. It wasn’t the wind. It wasn’t the tilt of the porch. It was something older, slower, and a bit more personal than erosion.
I bought it with a plastic bag full of change after closing a motorcycle loan three streets away. The customer wore gold rings that didn’t match his teeth. He’d asked me if I wanted the keys to his old scooter for cheap, but I said no. I wanted a plant. I wanted something still.
The seller had too many. Andong merah, glossy, stiff like a nervous tongue. “You don’t put that too close to your wife,” he’d warned with a smile. “It listens.”
I laughed too fast, paid, walked away with a leaf poking my neck. It felt deliberate.
It lived by the back window. Hera didn’t notice it for three weeks. Chan tried to eat its soil once. I said no, gently, but something sharp crept into my tone that made Hera look at me differently.
The andong didn’t grow. It leaned.
At first I thought it needed more light. Then less. Then more again. I turned it, watered it, whispered something about commitment. It stayed crooked.
When we fought, I found myself dragging the plant into other rooms. It became a habit. When things felt tense, I moved it to the bathroom. When things felt quiet, to the kitchen. When we reconciled, back to the window.
The more I moved it, the more it leaned. Like it was watching. Or trying to get away.
One night, Hera asked why I kept shifting it around. I told her it didn’t like stillness. She said, “Neither do you.”
She was right. I don’t stay in one place unless I’m paid to. My body belongs to motion. Fieldwork taught me that.
The plant was the first thing that made me sit.
Chan began speaking in broken images. “Red stick leaves,” he said one morning, poking at the plant with a pencil. “Not nice.”
I asked what he meant. He didn’t explain. Just blinked and shuffled away, dragging his tiny feet like he was trying to scrape something off.
My coworker died in a crash. I didn’t go to the funeral. I visited his house instead and left a cutting from the Cordyline in a bottle. I told myself it was a tribute.
That same night, I dreamed the plant grew legs and walked into the street. It caused a jam. The horns sounded like alarm clocks. One of them was mine.
I woke up sweating. The plant was still by the window, tilted like a question mark.
We fought again. Hera said she missed being touched like I meant it. She said I only remembered to kiss her when our son did something wrong. I stared at the Cordyline like it had answers.
She noticed.
“Don’t look at that,” she snapped. “Talk to me.”
So I did. And she listened. But something had already leaned inside us. Not just the plant.
I stopped moving it. Gave it a new pot. Better soil. More filtered light. Nothing changed.
But then Chan started drawing it. His lines were uneven, the leaves too big. But he drew it every day for a week. One day, he added eyes.
“They see me when you’re gone,” he said.
I didn’t ask what that meant.
The Cordyline bloomed once.
Just once.
A pale pink cluster, soft as breath and gone by morning. Hera didn’t see it. I didn’t take a photo. I didn’t even tell her.
I kept the memory like a coin in my pocket. Too small to spend, too precious to lose.
I got promoted. More clients, more trips, more excuses to escape the house.
The andong tilted closer to the wall. It stopped catching the light. It seemed to want darkness. It started shedding leaves like secrets.
I told myself I didn’t have time for grief.
Chan got sick. Nothing serious, the doctor said. But at night he muttered things in his sleep. Once he said, “Don’t let the red leaf fall.” I stayed up watching the plant, trying to will its color to hold.
The next morning, one of the oldest leaves was on the floor, dry and curled.
I swept it up quietly.
Hera found an apartment listing open on my phone. She didn’t yell. Just nodded. Said she hoped the new place had space for your little red spy.
She packed without urgency. Like she’d been waiting to do it.
I wanted to say she was wrong. That I wasn’t leaving. That it was just a tab, just a maybe, just a passing thought. But I couldn’t even lie properly anymore.
I stayed in the house.
The andong stayed with me.
Chan came on weekends. Hera didn’t stay long. She had a life to repair. I respected that.
I started leaving the plant alone. No more moving. No more coaxing. It leaned toward the empty wall like it finally found peace in pretending nothing else existed.
One evening, the plant stood straight.
I didn’t believe it at first. Thought maybe I’d bumped the pot. Or shifted the floorboards. But no.
It was upright.
Not tall, not bright, not beautiful.
But upright.
Like it had decided something.
Chan noticed. He touched its stalk gently.
“Better,” he said.
I asked why.
“It doesn’t watch me now.”
Then he turned and asked for pancakes.
Weeks passed. The plant didn’t bloom again.
But it stopped shedding.
I fed it. Watered it. Didn’t expect anything.
And one day, I found a new shoot.
Small, red-green, soft at the edges.
Fragile like a beginning.
The twist didn’t feel sudden. It was more like a quiet answer.
I had spent years trying to force things to grow the way I wanted.
This plant had waited for me to stop.
It had never refused growth.
Only control.
The Cordyline still leans sometimes.
But now I let it.
Growth doesn’t always mean straightening. Sometimes it’s bending in a way that still means rising.
Like love that lingers.
Like a story that doesn’t end.
Fendy is a writer and creative professional based in Malang, Indonesia. His work explores the intersections of nature, memory, and the surreal. Outside of writing, he spends his time composing music and studying the quiet language of visual art.