"Blossoms"

Paula Lehman
10/19/06
Blossoms

Honeysuckle
Behind my uncle’s house, just in front of the swamp and the small pine grove were the honeysuckle bushes. Tiny vibrant pink, pure white, and pale yellow flowers. They were clustered with orange snap dragons, growing wrapped around the remains of a tree that was struck by lightning years before my uncle bought the place.
The smell of the swamp and the sounds of living things within the water and the forest to the left of me gave the feeling of never being truly alone when I was outside. It was no longer a harmless backyard. Magic dwelled in the pines and tiny creatures hid in the cup of each toad stool and the clumps of Spanish moss.
Licking the sweet nectar from the stamen, I was bound to the beautiful innocence around me. Free to play with everything, fearless in my childish way. Safe in the world where adults aren’t welcome. Where unicorns may come prancing in at any time and faith is boundless; where broken hearts are for princesses who are always healed in the end, and struggles always have a deep cause and a sweet resolution.

Mimosa
The trees stood tall like sentinels surrounding my uncle’s back porch. Sometimes I would sling a sheet between two of their slender trunks and make myself a hammock. I would pretend I was stranded on a deserted island, with no school or mean older cousins because I was ship wrecked. My mom would let me put crackers and juice boxes in a pillow case and remain lost for the rest of the afternoon—but only after homework.
After years of standing guard, they finally burst forth with a deep pink mane of hair. Furry, slender dark pink flowers like I had never seen before with a rich, sweet, woody fragrance not unlike expensive perfume. My friends were growing up, as was I and we were attracting new company. We grew taller and softer and more beautiful everyday, our afternoons together becoming fewer and farther between. They now had their crown of pink flowers and were speckled with brilliant, sleek black hummingbirds as tiny and delicate as bumblebees, nests of pale blue eggs, and beetles with emerald shells.
I had a real life friend in the neighbor boy next door and stopped seeing the magic. Daisies no longer made good crowns and the honeysuckle now tasted like dirt. And I now knew, for certain, that the trees could never talk.

Red Roses
I got my first bunch of roses when I was 17 and had newly started college a year early. It wasn’t that I had never had a boyfriend, merely that I had never dated a boy old enough to be able to afford expensive flowers or dates. I remember trying to inhale their fragrance, the crimson petals bundled closely against one another, trapping my nose outside. The fragrance was not at all like I had expected, nothing like the perfume companies portray roses to smell. It was like plastic or lipstick or perhaps cleaning detergent.
I placed them in my mother’s cut crystal vase, enjoying the feeling of finally being old enough to be permitted use of the antique and went out on my date. It was uncomfortable and somewhat boring. We went to some sort of sport’s bar with all sorts of kitschy decorations on the walls and faux Tiffany lamps hanging over the tables. The food was good, but only in the way all fried and dairy laden food tends to be. His cologne smelled like incredibly intense laundry soap with a hint of sandalwood and burned my eyes when he hugged me. We dated for about four months, but it turned out neither of us was what either one had been expecting. He found me overly dramatic and I found him simple and boring.
The roses died in a few weeks, first turning the water foggy, then growing a deep, spinachey green, and finally shriveling and drying. I chopped them up to fertilize the tomato plants and ivy in the backyard. Cultivated roses are not real plants like honeysuckle or mimosa. Their meaning is created by card companies and their fragrance is bottled. The man who really knows me would bring me a sprig of honeysuckle and a picnic packed in an old pillow case.