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Seridano
Disaster On Legs
☆
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10-01-2012, 09:46 PM
#31 - Flowers
He stands in the garden where the flowers never bloom. Imagines the lilies that might have been, and the peonies that looked picture perfect sitting in the window of the flower shop down the street, but couldn't survive the shock of transplant or the winter’s chill.
Though nothing grows in the solemn beds, they are not without ornament. Each day he returns to place a marker in place of a flower that could have been, little paper roses – the only thing he knows how to make with palsied hands. They sit in staggered rows, zigzagging up and down the flower beds, each row bearing a variation in color or pattern. Green star-bursts peek from the farthest row and turquoise solids sit boldly in the first. Not a one of them is the traditional white, yellow, or red with their fixed meanings: Purity, friendship, love. Instead, he makes up meanings of his own for the oddly patterned roses that stick up from the dry beds: zebra patterns for birthdays, orange to remind him when the grass needs cutting, at least one standing at attention in each row, silver with red stripes for luck, gold for the impossible.
He has yet to make a single gold rose.
On Saturdays, he tells the girl that used to be his granddaughter (back when being his granddaughter was still considered cool) about the roses that he plans to add to the garden. She scoffs at him. He smiles.
On Sundays, he plants them. Each paper is folded with care, meaning infused into each thin layer. Several times he starts only to rip them when his hands shake. When this happens, he begins again without comment. He is at peace as they rest in his palms and slip between his fingers. He smiles as he pushes them, paper stem first, into the ground.
On Monday, it rains. Each week, this happens like clockwork. The paper buds bloom and sit for but a night before they are drenched and destroyed.
On Tuesday he plans the next batch of roses, decides that the meaning of orange shall be a promise made this week, and green star-bursts shall be regrets.
On Saturday, he tells the girl that used to be his granddaughter (back when being his granddaughter was still considered cool) about the roses that he plans to add to the garden. She scoffs at him. He smiles.
On Sunday he plants them.
This week, there are no green star-bursts.
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