Flowers, I Have Learned

Flowers, I have learned, are not about beauty. They are about the argument a seed makes with the dark: I will not stay here. I will go up. The tulip doesn't know it's beautiful. It only knows the sun is in one direction and the soil is not it. My mother kept a garden that didn't match. Nothing coordinated. The roses grew beside the weeds and she refused to choose between them, saying: everything that grows has made a decision to be here, and who am I to disagree? I bring flowers to the table now— not the expensive ones, the ones from the corner shop that are already halfway to wherever flowers go. I bring them because a room with flowers is a room that has declared something quiet and defiant: there is still time to put something beautiful in the center of things and build the day around it.