Even the Speckled Flower Dies
By James Dial
“Take what you need while there’s time.”
The garden gates were lined in rhododendrons.
They bloomed in a frantic array. I thought they came a little late and in entirely the wrong place then I reconsidered. The wrong time was certain but the place was arguable. I would’ve gone for marigolds.
They lined me up with the ferns and the maples and the evergreens. Ivy on bark. Three leaved and wilting.
I held forget-me-nots in my hands and hyacinths in my heart and purple and pink tulips on my lapel. Some to give and some to keep and none to hold forever. To join in eternal reverence. Nothing beautiful grows on sand.
I’d dreamt I was a willow.
And she was wisteria.
And our boughs intertwined like vines.
I saw her sister pass on.
She held orchids and carnations and red spider lilies. Her mother had placed a lotus on her corsage. I wanted to rip it off and tear it apart and cast it in the sky. I saw myself reach out and grab her wrist and spear the lotus from her arm. I wailed and I cursed it and I strew each petal across the lake in tatters like the rest of me and I trudged my way into the water until the only sound was bubbles from my mouth. And I screamed and I cried until all the noise was silent and all the water had merged with the tears and I no longer knew if I was sad or angry or rotted or deceased or whole or empty or alive. But I just stood there as she strode by and didn’t say a word about the flower or my heart.
She strode toward the centerpiece. The spruce. Gleaming. Drowning in decadent dreariness. Miserable and morose and macabre. Grisly and grim and grave.
The coffin in my chest rattled to remind itself it was still there.
Seven whistles rang in the air. The curlews calling in the wind. A melody of desolate decay. A lame lament for beauty and youth and life. Their staves were ringed in ruby. In their feathered hair were white chrysanthemums.
They lifted up the lid of what used to be spruce. I tore my eyes from the manufactured sheen. From the varnish that suffocated the wood. From the iron clamps that choked her and bound her and bent her limbs and snapped her branches and shred her leaves and tore apart what had already come undone. And they beckoned the rest of the crowd to view it. As if it were a bouquet. As if they could capture what was gone. As if they could paint color
back onto the petals and breathe water back into the veins and twist the stem until it snapped back into place.
As if they could make the flowers bloom in december.
The eternal blossom. The nipped bud. The holes in the taproot.
The cheers of the vultures and the wails of the bees.
A flytrap called my name. I crawled my way towards the weeds that grew around the wood. I hovered beyond the fungi growing from the wooden carcass. I lingered until I choked until I couldn’t stay rooted anymore.
Then I took a breath and I took a step and I looked into my box-shaped heart. And I saw my faded daffodil.
My eyes were all magnolias and Magnolia’s eyes were closed.
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