Petal

The petal fell in slow motion. I could have sworn I heard the soft snap as it broke free from its moorings in the sepal, but the eyes tend to amplify what the ears think they know, particularly when the senses are blown out on hallucinogens. I wanted to cry as I watched the colorful sheaf of matter flutter over itself. It rolled with an eternal laziness in a breeze I could almost see. It was a death-fragment, that moment, a microcosmic reminder that there was no great permanence to living things; even the most beautiful sprouts and blossoms of nature were not immune to the murderous march of time.

A small part of myself died too, watching that petal settle on the splintery windowsill. It was as though a small flake of my own mortality had fallen there beside the pink and blue teardrop, and before long it would also brown and curl and return to the dust from whence it came.

I was getting melodramatic. That was never good for a high. The world outside swirled like water whirlpooling in a toilet bowl, then the grey sky reasserted itself over the dark emerald hills and I blinked. A teary film washed my eyes clean, and I saw a brief, but bright, shaft of sunlight trace a corridor through the landscape. Then it was gone, and I was just a man sitting in a café next to a bouquet of dying flowers.

2014.08.29 – 2023.04.25

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