“Kid, you’ve been staring at the flowers quite too long now eh? What are you thinking?”
“Father, what will I do?”
“With the flowers?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
He put his arms around me. He took a deep breath and laughed. You know that sweet laugh Fathers do. The ones they do every time you confess a dumb moment or honestly admit a semi-dangerous mistake. I don’t know how you feel whenever they do it but it made me hate him. And that same thing reminds me of how much I’ve missed him.
“The flowers you’ve been staring at don’t know what to do too.”
He gently touched the petals and looked at me, “I don’t know how they survive it.”
“What?”
“Every second — they bloom despite it. I touched it, it didn’t step back or fold its petals. It trusts whoever stares or touches won’t pluck them out. And if someone does, they wither and bloom again.”
“You mean I should be like the flowers?
He made another sweet laugh and plucked out one of the flowers,
“Father why?”
“I don’t think flowers are here to be saved. Maybe, I don’t know.”
Comments (1)
Wow! Very well-wrought! Your piece reminded me of this saying which is often attributed to Rumi: "A Sufi holy man was asked: What is forgiveness? He said: It is the fragrance that flowers give when they are crushed."