The bonsai lives alone on a table that sits in front of a bare window in a dark, dingy, dull apartment on the west side of an urban city. It bears silent, uninterested witness to the humanity that passes it by every day. Anger, apathy, passion, and pride…all these things are on display in front of the bonsai's window at one time or another. The bonsai cares neither for the city's politics nor its economy, and its populace does not move the bonsai to sway or sigh any more than the fragile, intermittent wind from the small split in the window pane in front of it.

It does care about the garden across the busy street from its dank, cavelike existence; a small slice of greenery in the asphalt jungle. The bonsai envies the trees, shrubs, and flowers that live there, basking in the scant sunlight, drinking the occasional, polluted rain, and soaking up the admiration of the people who bother to look that way as they wander by. It even envies the occasional careful attention paid to the garden by the men in the long, dark coats who come and dig up the plants and then carefully put them back exactly as they were after they bury the bodies beneath them.