You had to pick the sincerest patch. That was the whole of the criteria and not one living soul ever explained how a person was supposed to measure such a thing.
So out you went at dusk with the blanket you had been expressly told not to take, and you sat yourself down among the vines in whichever patch looked honest to you.
And the sun went. And the cold came up out of the ground through the blanket and into you, and the moon got thin and high and unhelpful. And you waited.
Everybody else went home. Everybody else always goes home — that is the part they leave out of the telling.
And I will tell you what none of them ever stayed long enough to find out.
Something does come up out of the sincerest patch. It is small. It is shy. And it has been waiting on YOU.
