Flowers

It has been some time since the flowers from my birthday dried up. I kept them next to my bed for a while, and their musk told me something about myself I couldn’t yet name. When I packed up that room to move on, I didn’t think twice about throwing them out. They had given me what I needed, and now I would give it to myself.

In this new space that is at once spare and extravagant, tamed down and tinsel, there will always be flowers. A voice from across the Mexican sea and three hard years whispers, it is that kind of season.

I am 28 now, and better at choosing this body, this life, this version of me that exists right this moment. That is to say, I am better at goodbyes. When I packed up my things from that time that was both an escape and an always-ache, sitting on the parquet floors that once seemed a revelation (and did, until the end) I did it alone, with only thrown-out roses as witnesses. And that felt right. And it also felt like maybe the next time, I would not think it right, and that the next time, I could do this differently.

A person I love phones me on the day after it all starts to sink in and says, it’s a kind of rite, crying on the sidewalk of a new neighbourhood. The day before, in between a hurt I already harvested months ago over a pomegranate-heart and skipping over social media stories that stab, I see a person I once thought about kissing and I show them my pink couch and they tell me I can have their cat and join the block’s cycling gang even though I can’t really ride. And, like so many people before them, they offer to show me how. This time, I may even say yes.

Today I buy myself flowers and cut them over the sink and throw out last week’s rotted stems. And it already feels ritual, the rot and the rearranging, the brown amongst the bloom. It is a time tainted and sacred. I am so grateful to be living here amongst my contradictions.

And that is just to say, to the one before this time, before this break, before this bouquet of thorns and love – you do not know what is coming yet, but so much of it will be good. So much of this is the good.

Just wait. Something’s flowering.

Advertisement