"Starfish"

"There were ten jade plants lining the house.   Up against the gritty stucco wall.  That’s all there was for a garden.  The landlady didn’t care about the property at all.  And Reese didn’t believe in fixing up somebody else’s place.  But jade doesn’t need much to live.  It can get battered and broken and just hang around, still green, as if nothing was wrong.
In fact, the reason there were ten jade plants was that originally there were three.
One night, she had locked Reese out of the house because he was drunk and belligerent.  He kicked the door and then tore the plants apart and threw them all over the place.
They just took root where they landed.  And made babies.  Kind of garbled looking but she liked them there. She did.  But sometimes she didn’t.  Sometimes she thought they looked tacky and low class.  Because there wasn’t anything else but them. 

Reese had just quit drinking.  Because he cared about the health of all living things, the balance of energies on the planet and because the price of liquor at any decent place was a total rip off.

She thought about a starfish.  The five points.  The fact that it seemed to be dead and alive at the same time.  And it had a mysterious life from the outside. Did it breathe?  Did it move?
It slowly detached itself from things and swung its heavy, throbbing limbs through the resistance of angry currents that beat it backwards until it reached something else.  It probably didn’t decide what to cling to next.  But then again, it had to decide to detach itself in the first place.  To move away.  And take a chance... to just let go."