Timed out, tired out factory farm flowers in the supermarket on a Sunday afternoon. Broken backs, dry stigma, sloped style and hidden ovary, petals fringed by crisped brown lace as the clock tock-tocks to early closing. You feel so sorry you buy a bunch. With considerate fingers peel away the dimpled cellophane. You fill your mother’s clay vase, the one she kept her darling garden daffodils in with rainwater from the water butt outside. Plop in a hard white aspirin. Enjoy the fizz n pop. Snip the stem tips at a soft and slanted angle. Arrange each in the vase to best advantage. Try to not notice petals coming away. You wish good things to those clinging on. Is that sad of you? You tell the flowers they are pretty and important and necessary and deserve to live in the suntrap nook. The next morning you see the leaves perked up a bit, the stalks strengthen. You refresh the water. A single petal falls. The day after, you smile at the ovals no longer floppy. Is it your imagination or are they a firmer yellow now? They have the will to live. You congratulate yourself on the brightness, lightness brought into your home. You pick a flower. The biggest one. Lift it to your face, press your nose into the pistil. You forget what it was like all the other times. You wonder what it was like in virgin bloom. Picture it. Give it clean air. Sunshine. Rain. Bees earning a sugary reward. You try again. Take a sniff. It smells of nothing.
Cath Holland is a writer of fiction and fact based on Merseyside, published by Mslexia, Deak Ink Books, Fictive Dream, Arachne Press.
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