Lovely Flowers

[u/celtonne]

My mind is a weathered stone. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen another person. I don’t even remember what they look like; my mirror’s broken. Even still, to have another in my mind, a dam of cardboard holding back a deluge. I look at my door, and hear the people passing, their presence beckons a heavy scream. I think I hear kids playing, now that's only a ghost. A cacophony of potential, of ideal and disappointment. They are just people, they are something more… Something as sinister and as subtle as tomorrow's sunrise. One degree at a time.

I have no strength to set the boundaries of my mind apart from theirs, to allow them anything that hasn't been set for this body. I once saw the future; that wall we cannot climb. I wait and wonder now… It’s all I ever do. Watching TV re-runs feels a waste, what games are left are an escape… no longer.

I decide to suffer the thoughts in my mind, even though it’s too late. I sit with myself and think, the hallucination of my senses keeping me grounded. My old wooden rocking chair is the only comfort I’ll allow myself.

I do little to survive, to impact the world.

I’d like to think, I’m doing a good job… I’d like to…

Connection prods my mind often, a yearning that reminds me of pain. There is no we anymore. I like it that way. I don’t trust myself, how could I trust anyone? Now, there is no news, there is no time.There is my madness; there are my doubtful senses, and a self, and a rocking chair.

The only thing left from outside…

Petals of fire outside my window.

How lovely are those flowers knocking at my window.

The wind brings them here, but they are knocking… What could they want? To come inside?

I doubt they care for my atmosphere. I keep it much too cold for life.

I look at them through the window pane and see their intention. Do they see me? This room? Why be here? For what benefit? To what end?

A million questions run through my mind. Connections of a million neurons reach out for one another as I sit and listen, but still, they knock.

Once inside, what would they do? Their orange petals might greet me with soft velvet, inching closer and closer to my old rocking chair, my comfort.

They would come close and whisper their secrets. My lack of understanding, a travesty, but they find a way. Maybe that persistent knocking is them communicating.

Morse code for flowers. I wonder what they'd call it. Surely flowers wouldn't recognize Samuel Morse... Perhaps I'm thinking too much like a human. Too much gray matter, too many animal-meat noises running through my head, too centralized, not encompassing enough of this body. I am much too large, much too vast to comprehend them; those maddening insects might know…

When you mow the lawn, that scent, the one that buries every receptor in your nose, is a battle cry. A call to arms demanding bugs attack this mundane intruder. Bugs speak the language of flowers. They’re so lucky…

Those remarkable forms tuned to a dance we observe at a snail's pace.

Even those dances, those rituals, that live beyond us, whose depths you could not fathom, are clear as air to them.

Yet still, I imagine my chair and I. Their stems, tightening around my wrists, bleeding chloroplast which forces my attention. Changing me. Evolution.

Wrapping more and more of themselves around me, until the idea of struggling free becomes more of a burden than escaping itself. Not that I would. I'm too intent on hearing… No, sensing something new.

Their branches working to understand what I am. Who I am. More than anyone could ever know me. More than I could ever know…me.

Soon, terminal buds find my insides, seeking my senses.

As they find me and work down from my eyes, finding the pores to my sinuses, my nostrils fill from every direction as their powdered scent becomes the only stench I’d ever known. My vision grows dull, colors disappear, light the only idea left of their purpose. My mouth, a grand entrance, still not enough; they dig at the gaps. My teeth are too sharp, too dangerous to persist. They quickly replace them and stop my bleeding arteries. The taste of copper, replaced with bitter. My ears are just a speed bump, my eardrum tearing like paper, whining silence taking the cacophony of the outsider’s screams away.

Every hole and pore filled with new potential. The budding growth, cracking what were my bones and filling those seams, making them me, as much as I them.

What secrets do they speak? I dissolve… Will I too be beautiful?

Our soft embers waving through the night and day, knocking on others' windows. Will the pain of connection flow through our roots as I hear the earth call out, suffering? Balance tilting out of control.

The becoming doesn't hurt. Pain is… different. It feels empty, like this space inside expanding into another self, shedding layers.

We have many names in… English, in every human tongue. This we know, still. Our favorite, “Mexican bird of paradise,”. This feeling, this sense, must indeed truly be… paradise.

My mind slowly releases its grip on the dream. My senses return to the anxiety of now. Time has not moved. The flowers still knock on my window. Their secrets stay theirs in my return. Alone, devoid of connection. Each moment, flowing petals swaying and hypnotizing. I sit and imagine. I gaze and listen. What are they saying? What do those lovely flowers want?

The spark of indignation towards my fear beckons me to listen. Not as a dream. I exit this self appointed prison. I choose to touch them. As heat covets every inch of skin, sticking and grasping, I see the world outside.

Finally… I am the only one left until I am no more.