I’ve always admired the way flowers fold into themselves when they perish. Each delicate petal, once blooming in bright and imaginative hues, dulls down to a greyscale version of its previous self and collapses. The colors bleed out into the sky and paint the air with the graceful wisps of perfumy scent carried throughout the wind.
There’s a stark contrast within a flower’s lifespan.
Grow. Bloom. Thrive. Decay.
It is, of course, the natural cycle of life that has been ingrained in our brains since kindergarten, but just because it’s been repeated doesn’t mean it loses meaning.
Its haunting beauty leaves me agape in adulation at the site in which it first came of. Each petal is gently cradled by the wind, being rocked back and forth with a lullaby, as it drifts to the ground slowly and is absorbed back into the earth as it hits the soil.
Everything dies.
I understand that, I really do, and although I’m sure I’ve said and thought this sentence countless times, I don’t think I’ll ever truly be able to grapple with it. If I were a flower, perhaps I would be more deliberate. With the knowledge that each decision in life is monumental and each moment takes up a prodigious fraction of life, maybe I would truly think things through. My thoughts are haphazardly thrown across my mind, like the clothes out of place and heaped in my room, but I lack the organization I need to put my life into order.
I am messy and imperfect; I am as delicate as a flower but never quite as beautiful. I decay and return to life but never quite as poetically.
Poetic is, at a glance, a way of action outside of the norm among the bounds of elegance and opulence that I often lack. Doing everyday things in such a way that I hold my breath in expectation, waiting for what’s next to come, and tiptoe quietly so as not to disturb the rhythmic beat and cadence of my inner monologue.
I prefer to think that when I bloom, the resounding effects and words etched into my soul will reverberate across the solar system, each one bouncing between asteroids tucked in between pockets of stardust and beauty unbeknownst to me. I want to decay slowly and painfully so that each stab of pain will serve as a reminder of the life I’ve lived and the wonders I’ve seen.
The goddess Venus will float down and gently rock my falling petals to rest on the ground and pick up the crumbled fractures of my soul as I begin anew.
