In your front yard, there are flower pots, each of them unalike in color: royal blue, fuji apple red, and goldfinch yellow. In the spring, the flowers have grown over the sides of the pot, overflowing with the colors of the rainbow. But in the winter there is nothing.

Our friendship is like those flower pots. Once-blooming and growing every day, it is now like the flowers in the winter. There is nothing left but the remains of the flowers that once flourished in the sunlight, the rotted fruits of the flowers that once grew.

With each twenty-four-hour day, the stems would grow taller and taller; our trust and bond created were as solid as a brick wall. But this brick wall, while strong and mighty, managed to keep others out and me blind from the truth, a truth I never wanted to admit.

Someday our friendship, our flowers, would rot away and be overtaken by weeds. We never once had to pull weeds from the soil that our flowers called home, never once did we fight or lose our tempers. But all good things must come to an end.

Weeds choked out our flowers and stripped them of their beauty; what was once standing tall with confidence and security now lays in the cracks of the concrete below. I drove past the flower pots and saw where the flowers used to thrive. It made me not sad, but angry, to see something so elegant ignored and disregarded. 

Everything in your front yard is now ugly and plain without the colors of the rainbow to catch people’s eyes. But, whatever happened to me? I lost flowers too.

In a small pot, I planted an avocado pit. Just how the flowers represented our friendship, my avocado tree represents my new beginning, my new life. I do not share this plant with anyone else because it is my story and my growth. 

My avocado plant is still rather small, but it’s because it’s just been planted. My new start has just begun. And with every twenty-four-hour day, my plant grows, but this time I will not let weeds grow. 

It may take a while for my tree to give me avocados, but I’ll be patient and acknowledge the growth as it happens. Sure our flowers are dead, but the avocado tree is alive.