by Malini Gandhi The day I finished my dissertation was also the day the rain washed away our marigolds, roots and all, and the day Eileen said she was leaving me and taking the piano with her. I sat for a while in the purple room with the fingerprints on the walls, watching men with orange hats walk back and forth across the muddy lot below our apartment where the tiny, unplanted trees sat stacked on the sidewalk with their roots splayed upwards.