The Botany of Regret

The orchid arrived minutes after the divorce papers. Phalaenopsis aphrodite, the tag read: “Symbol of new beginnings.” Ironic, given its petals hung like crumpled tissues, roots spilling over the ceramic pot like frayed nerves. I named it Regret.

My grandmother Mae grew orchids in her Arizona greenhouse. She’d whisper to them while misting dew onto velvet leaves at dawn. “Plants don’t lie, Clara,” she’d say. “Neglect them, and they fade. Love them wrong, and they rot.” I’d rolled my eyes then. Now, at 44, I stared at this dying thing and heard her voice: Everything alive needs light, honesty, and the courage to cut what’s dead.

I’d failed at all three.

*Week 1:*

I placed Regret on my fire escape. Rain slicked its wilting petals like tear tracks. I drank cheap chardonnay and listed my marital crimes: Worked late. Forgot his birthday. Chose silence over apologies. One midnight, I snapped a yellowed leaf. Milky sap oozed—thin and bitter as shame.

*Week 3:*

Roots turned to black sludge. I googled “last rites for orchids.” A forum insisted: “Prune the rot. Even if only stubs remain.” I hesitated. Cutting felt like surrender—another admission that I’d broken something irreparable.

Then I remembered Mae’s hands—knuckles like tree roots, shears flashing as she amputated diseased stems. “Sorry, darling,” she’d murmur. “But decay spreads.”

I boiled scissors.

Snip. A necrotic root fell.

Snip. A spongy leaf.

Snip-snip-snip.

Until only three pale roots remained, naked as confession.

I repotted it in bark and sphagnum moss—the orchid equivalent of intensive care. “Now we wait,” I told the plant.

What I meant: Now I face what’s decaying in me.

*The Unearthing:*

I called David, my ex. Not to reconcile—to speak the rot aloud.

“Remember Sedona? When you wanted to stargaze, and I answered a work call?”

Silence. Then: “You saw stars later.”

“Alone,” I said.

He sighed. “We both planted weeds, Clara.”

That night, I deleted 72 LinkedIn “connections” I’d never met.

*The Composting:*

I boxed wedding photos. Not angrily—ritually. Each frame was a dead leaf to shed. When David came to collect them, he brought a spider plant. “For *Regret,”* he said. “Even survivors need friends.”

We drank chamomile tea, knees not touching. Didn’t mention the past once.

*The Green Shoot:*

Eight weeks later, a spike pierced Regret’s soil—thin, jade, straining toward the sun. I cried. Mae’s ghost chuckled: Told you, stubborn girl.

Last Sunday, it bloomed. Not the pristine white the tag promised, but blushed with raspberry streaks, like a scar healing. Six flowers. Each a tiny fist uncurling.

David visited. We sat beneath its defiant grace.

“Looks…battle-ready,” he said.

“Had to,” I replied. “It nearly died.”

He studied me. “You seem lighter.”

I was. I’d pruned my job, my grudges, my endless what-ifs. New roots had space now: pottery classes, hiking trails, volunteering at Mae’s preserved greenhouse.

Yesterday, a boy pointed at a gnarled Dendrobium with crumpled blooms. “Why’s it ugly?”

I smiled. “Because it survived.”

In the donation bin, I found another Phalaenopsis—roots rotting, leaves limp. I tucked it beside Regret.

“Meet *Second Chance,”* I whispered.

David sends me memes of dancing cacti every Friday. We’re not rebuilding. Just watering something tender and new.

Funny, isn’t it? We think growth is adding—more love, more success, more petals. But real blooming starts with subtraction. With staring down rot and whispering:

**You don’t get to take the whole plant down.**

Mae knew. Orchids know.

Now, when morning light filters through the greenhouse glass, I run my fingers over* Regret*’s healed leaves—thick with stored resilience, veined with silver where wounds once split. The blooms have multiplied, each petal a map of survival: delicate at the edges but fiercely rooted. I breathe in the humid air, thick with the scent of damp moss and second chances, and finally understand that beauty isn’t the absence of scars. It’s the quiet audacity of opening again, knowing storms will come. Knowing you’ll bend. Knowing you’ll still rise.

Now, finally, so do I.

BY ZIAFAT ULLAH, THANKS FOR READING.