welcome merry souls

floriography

so i wrote this in like 12 hours bc my short story was due despite given 8 weeks hahahah vv rushed towards the end bc word limit of 1000, pls enjoy. 

stimulus: some old hands and skull rings

As I stand in ear-splitting rain, sodden in an onyx trench-coat, I do not care about the mud caking my shoes. Nor do I care about the itching red at the corners my eyes, despite the hereditary allergy to pollen. What I do care about is not a what.

It is a who.

Her name is Charlene Collins.

I remember employing one of the state's top lawyers for my court case, thinking I could get away from community service as naivety and haughtiness pumped vividly inside me. And when I came to realise that I was stuck in the middle of interminable plains of violet, fuchsia, scarlet, tangerine, and most horrendous of all, green, I thought I was done for. I was going to squander one month of the Summer break gardening weeds with a kooky geezer who wore fluorescent orange gumboots and skull rings.

"I need to stop paying my taxes, I don't want the government's help through you useless lot." She had muttered, brushing me off upon first appearance.

"Now you've opened the door to the city- you reek of pollution. All the flowers will wilt." She beckoned me over, wrinkling her nose at my attire.

"I'm going to eliminate that stench as fast as I pour bleach on my shirts. Haul those daffodils into the truck- that will cleanse your odour. There are only twenty-six species of wild ones- as rare as me, I suppose." She pointed to thousands of neatly tied bundles.

"I have an allergy to pollen-" I tried to interject.

"I've heard that one before. Try again next time."

That day, I counted a record one hundred and thirty-two sneezes. I also counted two scraped nails, several grass stains on the bottom of my jeans, and one very intense hatred towards a certain woman named Charlene Collins. In my wrath, I merged her first and last name together. Charcoal. Like the colour, a representation of misery.

I remember exactly fourteen hours after that, Charlene Collins taught me how to forgive and forget through the sacrifices of daisies. At sunrise, she tugged her breeches and culled a daisy. While cursing a string of words, she plucked each petal off, taking her 'he loves me, he loves me not' chant to an unknown and unseen level. I could only scrutinise her hands, frail with pleats and laced in blue veins, daringly and accurately yank each petal off in horror.

"No!" She screeched as she clutched onto the last petal. "Turns out today will be a bad day. Here, pick one. Recite what you want to forgive and forget." Her idea was bizarre, impossible, the least, murderous, yet I wanted to believe that forgetting was that simple. How easy something so drastic and impacting could be waived away with mere flora. With nothing to lose, I took one, cursing my fate as the ivory leaves fell.

"Your fingernails are very long. No housework. Spoilt." I ripped off the last petal with a 'no' and observed her pudgy nails, begrimed with earth. They mimicked tree stumps; how ironic she wore skulls just above.

"Why skulls?" There was an immediate shift in mood.

"That's why today's a bad day. You should learn to appreciate how much love you receive. Look where mine got me." She grumbled wearily. She wasn't so talkative afterwards.

I never really understood the purpose of flowers back then, how they symbolised bogus concepts, how they shrivelled after a week in a vase, how despite fields of the so-called "peace-keeping" plants, Collins would continue to pester me relentlessly. I don't think I ever really felt a deep connection with the land, there was always a crater to fill. The first few nights at her inn were excruciating – the telephone respired static, and the goggle-box flickered snow every five seconds. Labour-intensive days were rewarded with the pleasantries of the countryside - that was, nothing.

I think it was only halfway through the month that I started to recognise the effort Charlene Collins invested in her work. I was a runny-nosed outsider in her experimental garden, enduring her barking as she tended each sprout with benevolence, knowing they would serve an equally lavish purpose. She knew that all the extensive exertion I took on harbouring meadows would make me neglect my former thoughts of my former societal expectations, where in these golden plains, there was no hustle of the lacklustre city, no demeaning bustle of the public. I was quite literally free, an experience I never really had the opportunity to appreciate. While vandals and socialites were breaking their way into the materialistic world, I was sipping pink lemonade next to a busybody named Charcoal, watching streaks of coral fuse into the dark over prairies of rosy tones. My appreciation for rural complexions was stark - we both recognised how much I was leaning into this fantasy.

Charlene Collins taught me the language of flowers, how purple carnations symbolised capriciousness, how white symbolised innocence, pure love. I remember the time we synchronously winced as we watched a couple, taking their wedding photos, trod on crimson chrysanthemums and puncture their garments with rose thorns.

"It's like they're killing their love already." She had lamented, shaking her head while her ring spun meticulously. Although the couple didn't understand floriography, no longer was I prejudiced against the purpose of flowers. More, I was beginning to accept the significance of their variety.

I remember the last evening with her, speculating over how different it would be once I got back into the city. How, instead of balmy winds and swaying colours, only incessant monotony of black and white would greet me. I grew aware that yearning to back there, basking in sunlight next to a not so cold-hearted Charlene Collins, was going to be an inevitable feeling once transported back into reality. Appreciation was a virtue I learnt in ranges of heathers, gardenias, forsythias, and I, too, began to appreciate the language of flowers.

I crouch by the marble headstone, donning two small bouquets of salmon pink roses, hydrangeas and camellias, both tied by a skull ring. A relic of our relationship. I set one down for her, and one for her neighbour, a Collins who had passed away forty years earlier.

Thank you for teaching me the art of appreciation.