The One Who Talks to the Flowers

Introduction

I’ve been told I exited my mother’s womb swiftly and without any significant delay on an early Spring morning; and I pretty much assume my mother cradled my soft head still stained with amniotic fluid only lovingly, in a state of special, classical, maternal euphoria, with total care. Assumptions are all I really have when it comes to the years I spent as a vulnerable baby — those and the odd parental anecdote. I think that’s how most people recall their baby-years — barely; it’s all so hazy, fragmented, partial: you never hear anyone recounting the difficulty of learning to walk, do you?

By the time I reached eighteen I hadn’t touched one man's manhood. It’s not that I don’t or didn’t like boys, it’s more so the fact that they don’t like me. I kissed one once, but I spent my adolescence devoid of a cute lover, a soothingly warm body to touch, a pulsating penis, erect in the name of me; and for that reason I profess that I experienced what was quite simply a youth devoid of a... titan arum, let's say. (I cannot speak for my two sisters.)

But let us forget sex, (as I seemed to have done my whole life) and wind the clock back some years.

At age twelve I won a writing contest in school, which, to everybody's upset, furnished my mind with a robust ego when it came to words. Doutbless I could claim much of it has fizzled away as I've aged, however that wouldn't be a sufficient deterrent for your thinking that I’m stuck-up and full of myself, for I'm obviously young. Ego is a funny thing though, really. We need it, some live in it, but some plot to escape it. I’ve read the philosophical works of a certain someone, and in a particular book they state how the ego should be used to one’s benefit when it comes to personally progressing. Say I never did win that contest, never cultivated a sense of conceit, perhaps I would never have thought myself able to write? I'm just saying, we should know our skills and weaknesses, and the ego could be called: your sense of your skills. My vocabulary trumps my sexiness, and I know that. Anyway, you can rest assured knowing that I probably know myself more than I love myself.

To tell you the truth, I am excited. I’ve never told a story before, furthermore it’s true! It all happened! And only I experienced it, only I'm qualified to explain it. Roll your eyes no more, reader, it is not the story of my life, — that would be mundane — it is something else, something I will, with every word of my prose, try my best to appropriately unfold in the most apt manner. It thrills me to wonder what you might be thinking as you read these words that I once wrote. (There are many moments during which I wish I could neutrally perceive my work, to assimilate the writing without actually being me - but alas! I cannot.)

All I can really guess is that a few of you might think: “A strange, young, cocky girl - read a lot of books and now thinks she’s qualified to write.” You’d be erroneous, my dear. You forget about my experiences. It is they that present me with this desire to talk, to explain, to divulge, and you will know of them soon enough in the course of this little story.

Yes — you’ll find I do like to talk about me a lot, but that’s because I’m the person I know best. I’m also a pretty integral character in this narrative, and, yes, therein you’ll come across some fruitless recordings of my doings, some typical deprecatory comments, and my funky humour; but most importantly you will come across a story that will shock you to believe that it isn’t fiction, but I assure you it’s not: it is as real as all those stamens that never reached my pistils. So enjoy and prepare.

Part One -

The sight of school shrinking away in the distance for the last time infused me not only with an unfamiliar sense of liberty but also the thoughts of who might still make the effort to keep in contact with me. I doubted it would be many. How could it be with a total of zero friends?

My dad drove home interrogating me about my future, and for a moment, I could have probably convinced myself that he wasn’t taking me home at all, rather to a very secluded shed in which hung a naked bulb and a vast array of tools which, if necessary, would be used to extract information, and blackmail me into choosing a path of employment or further education for my pretty vague self.

“So… After all the celebratory drinking etcetera, where to next for you? You've got a big choice of Colleges,” he muttered in a casually confident tone, as if this nature of his vocal would manipulate me into thinking college was the default and only option.

“Hmm, maybe.”

“Don’t you have to get an application in soon?”

“Nah, it won't be for a while.”

We drove past the melancholy fields filled with wheat and corn that danced in the summer wind: we were heading for my freedom. I sat, shotgun, musing on my future which I believed would have to be so terribly secular. Once the paternal enquiries subsided, it was a quiet drive that lasted roughly ten minutes, just like all the rest I’d never have to experience again. I was strapped in my father’s car and cast out of education, and since no amount of contemplation could grant me a precise knowledge as to what I wanted to do, I spent the remaining minutes of the journey trying to summon in my mind an idea of what I might be having for dinner that night.

In school I was disposed to arts. I took Art as a GSCE, in addition to History, Business Studies, and Media. A part of me regretted that I didn’t choose Drama, and that I did choose Business, but that was now all delightfully irrelevant.

My younger sister, Martha, is a year younger than me, and so at this time was set to enter her last year of school, but she was no art-hoe. She, I must say, was a bit more of a simpleton. Judge me not, my reader, I love her and we get along, — most of the time — but we are evidently two souls of quite a different nature. She’s a Pisces, and I’m an Aries, although our dispositions seems to correlate more with each other’s star sign rather than our own. Relax, I don't read the hottest magazine's latest take on my fate - she might...

Ulmina, my older sister with the extravagant name that I envy, is three years older than me. As of now she lives in the family home and works in administration for a fairly reputable firm. Her hair is frustratingly blonde, — frustratingly because I envy it — her face is quite perfect, her body also, more or less. She’s a fraction shorter than me, and a whole lot prettier, and I’m not saying that in a obligatory way, because I have no trouble is saying that my younger sister is, in my opinion, no way as pretty as my older one. Ulmina has this aura of a prim diva; she walks artfully slow, never really letting loose too much. She cares extensively for her looks, and in spite of how gorgeous she is I get the feeling she is, to some degree, rather insecure, definintely introverted.

So they are my sisters. I love them, and it’s irregular for us to not get along. Martha has the biggest group of friends, I’m the unconventional book-worm who doesn’t know what it’s like to have someone inside of me, and Ulmina is the pretty one. Case closed.

When my mum arrived home from work, she sprinkled kisses on my cheeks — not so lovingly in my opinion, for it felt like the sensation of her groomed mouth pressing my face communicated a certain sentiment from her to me, a sentiment composed of the words: “Feel the lips of what you will not disappoint: you will go to college.”

“What’s for dinner?” I asked.

“Kievs and vegetables.”

“Nice, I like it.”

“What are you thinking then, Von?” added my father.

“Let the girl breathe, Laurence, she’s hardly stepped out of the school gates.”

“I just want to know what she’s thinking.”

“She’s thinking that she doesn’t want to be thinking about her future the second she’s free from school. Isn’t that right, little darling?” I nodded.

“You can’t leave it too long.”

“Everyone else,” I yelped, “is going to be partying non-stop, drunk for a whole summer.”

“And what will you do for the whole summer?”

“Not that, I can assure you.”

“Well,” my dad finally added, standing up from his chair and wandering off into the lounge to intimately place his laptop upon his lap, “you’re not stupid. Yo’ve got good grades under your belt. You’ll be fine.” My mum looked at me and smiled, playfully shaking her head at my father’s anxiety regarding my future. It’s my life in this state of uncertainty, mine, and he’s the one shivering with nervousness!

“How’s school?” I asked Martha cheekily when she stepped into our room, for my school year finished a week earlier than hers was due to.

“It’s easy. Always is near the last day of term, you know.”

"True - easier than the first day of the new term, that’s for sure," replied I, hinting at the fact that she was to return after summer to the institution I rather much abhorred.

“So what are you gonna do after summer?”

“I don’t know yet. See who I can still class as a friend.”

“What’s for dinner?”

“Chicken Kievs, the timeless dish.”

“Tell mum to leave mine in the oven if I’m not back in time.”

“Why, where you going?”

“Town.”

“Oh. Alright. Who with? The girls?”

“Yeah, just the girls.” Just the girls, just the half-a-dozen girls...

“Cool.”

Martha then began to eagerly undress from her uniform; and symbolising an ultimate disregard for school the pile of clothes sat, scrunched up, like a big dog poop, only they smelt of my sister’s tacky perfume not the faeces of a canine.

A fake leather jacker, biker style, was cast upon her shoulders and she left the room. I was now pleasurably alone, carefully consulting myself about what to do with the abundance of free time I had recently been granted with.

“What am I going to do tomorrow?” I asked myself. Nothing of any real interest struck me; I was in a trance of gentle contentment produced by the thought that I no longer had to persuade my partially unresponsive body to crawl out of bed early in the morning in the name of my dreadful school, and so I knew, that night, not only would my quilt and blankets be cradling my free self into slumber, but also the beautiful knowledge that for not one more moment would I ever have to look at Miss. Mulhern’s condescending, goat-like face, or be told to remove my earrings by a man who resembles more a mechanical, power- hungry frog than an actual human being.

Part Two

In my maudlin town sits a wonderful public garden filled with patches of pansies and tendered turf, one mature magnolia tree, — which I adore — one imposing pine, and many more delightful plants of nature, the names of which I sadly haven't learnt. I frequented this place often. I’d waddle around, sniff the air and sometimes take to sketching the birds or flowers. Benches are dotted around the place and on all of them I have consumed multiple coffees. Truthfully I’m a lonesome kind of girl. My family means more to me than anything of course, but leaving school left me with only two friends really — something I don’t see as necessarily bad.

In all of my entire visits the oddest things I came across might’ve been a cocky robin that landed right on the armrest of the very bench I was sat on, or a squirrel pulling a poor little flower out of the ground as though it was an act of calculated vengeance. That was until what I one day saw.

What I descried was a strange, youthful person dressed completely in white, talking to a group of roses. Watching them, I was unable to interpret the words or gender of this very fringe being. Whoever they were they spoke to those plants so softly, so casually, as though they had done so before a million times. I was both fascinated and bewildered; even with my own love for pansies and poppies and all the rest, I still could not understand what would possess someone to converse with what I saw as no more than unintelligent, unconscious, pretty plants.

At first I thought this person to be a bizarre girl. Long, quaint curls dangled from their head, brown, tangled, twisted and thick, and they laid on their tummy with their legs bent upwards, their chin resting on the palms of their hands, a bit like Lolita on the cover of the book. Whilst peering at whom I soon realised was a boy I did not stop, but merely slowed my plodding. Oh, how much more I wanted to know the contents of what he was saying by virtue of that to which he was speaking. What young man lays on the grass in all white attire delicately talking to flowers? Wearing this fluffy white jacket, he looked like a funny little bohemian prince or something.

Anyhow, soon he was out of sight, so I followed the path of the garden which looped around to the entrance, which is also the only exit, before he came back into my sight. My concern was captured by him. No longer could I look at the blooming flowers or the joyful birds without wondering what on earth he was saying! So I left.

True — he could of simply been speaking aloud to himself whilst looking at the flowers, or even thinking aloud. True — he could have been on drugs. And true — I could have approached him, so why didn't I? Well, he looked, in his pure white apparel, like a rebellious angel, like he had been cast out of heaven for not getting a haircut. “Be gone, ragamuffin!” God might have said. “Trim thy hair or leave this blissful realm!” — excuse my digression.

Anyway, I was as set on returning to the garden as I was eager to see the boy.

And so I returned — and so we conversed!

“I’m not from this world.”

“Somehow I highly doubt that”, I replied, jagged with rationality.

“Somehow you doubt that, huh,” he briefly chuckled with a wisp of maturity shooting from his thick nostrils, like he didn't even wish to stoop to my base level of understanding. In all honesty, as weird as he was, he seemed kind of wise.

“Well, hey," I continued on, "just because you’re different doesn’t mean you don’t belong here. Just because you don’t have friends doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have friends. I donlt have many.”

“I’m confused.”

“Yes - evidently.”

“I have strange memories.”

“What of?”

“Of a different world.”

“What’s it like?”

“Different.”

“In what way?”

“In a way I can’t describe. This isn’t me. I’m not this body; this is…”

“So what, you want to be someone else?”

“Not someone else, something else. It's hard for me to explain it, even for myself.”

“Maybe you should see a therapist… Or learn to play an instrument?”

“On what premise?”

“On the premise that you’re a little bit too funky. I like weird. If you breach the course of what is considered normal then I’ll probably like you, however you are more funky than I could have apprehended. Do you like to read?”

“So do you like me?” I was too nervous to tell him.

“Well, do you like me?” I replied, furthering the back and forth of questions unanswered. His response warmed my little heart.

“Considerably,” he said.

Part Three

The only thing I could think about was my meeting with the boy. Now, with school over, I could entertain my mind by laying on my bed munching my favourite chocolate bar and picturing his physique, his hands, his bitten finger-nails, — sign of a neurotic by the way — his shaggy white coat he literally seemed to always wear, his schmaltzy look, his big but soft face.

I went to the garden again, to see if he was there. Yes he was, laying as usual, calm and pensive as though deep in thought, or in conversation with the flowers! Ha!

“Hey, you.”

“Hello, companion. You’ve come to join me again.”

“Of course. You’re interesting.”

As a balmy breeze flew around I sat beside him. He then began to talk, so I took the opportunity to let him.

“If we negate our sadness on the premise that it will dissolve soon enough then what is to stop us from doing the same with our joy? Can I tell you something?” He said to me: “I don’t want to kill myself, I want to die, and be reborn. I want to tell you why I’m here all the time, why this garden is my home and yet its reality my prison. I’m a fallen spirit, and all I can hear are the voices of the flowers. I consult with them all day long, but they are jester-like and spew riddles, they taunt, but also they tell, and I need them to help me return home. I’ve pleaded, begged, and they mock me when I’m frowning.”

What I can call a clean pause followed.

“You know, I always thought ‘how do you never get your clothes dirty?’ You’re always laying on the floor, always wearing white, yet you’re always immaculately white.”

I'm not sure which reaction he expected from me, if any, so I just went with it. Actually I was pretty shook by his statement, but for some unexplainable reason I simply gave him the most frank trust I could, I wanted to help him, and I found some sense to add to his spew, to foster it.

“You’re funny.” He said. I relished his compliments — so cute! “Hey, you wanna know what the flowers are saying?”

“What?”

“‘Who’s the girl?’ They want to know why you're talking to me.”

I laughed. This kid was funny - and odd. He must've seen I was both laughing and curious.

“You want me to shut up? I can’t I’m afraid; I won’t stop consulting these plants until they help me home.”

“Well, are you asking the right flower? — in the right way?”

“I don’t know.”

“Probably you already know this, but flowers are delicate things, they need sensitivity in approach. I love flowers, and if I needed to ask them how to get home I would do so with my heart tender and humble. Why so much haste, huh? Sit in a relaxed pose, like a monk or something, take this furry thing off and let yourself breathe.” Honestly I had no knowledge at all how I was advising him so surely.

Then we both fell speechless, glaring at each other. I wanted to see in this boy that he wanted me or liked me in a romantic kind of way, but during that span of time his eyes brightly said: “Thank you.”

This time I went home the same picture filled my mind. I replayed our conversation in my head; I seriously could not be further from thinking about a career choice. Playing along with his game was weird, like I was feeding his zaniness, zaniness which might just be the blunt symptom of a poor schizoid. What kind of family did he have? I bet he comes from a broken home and that garden is his get-away. But I must tell you there swelled inside of me a feeling of the contrary, that every single thing he said to me was true, that he did need help returning back to his home, wherever that was. I wrestled with the possibilities.

After sometime passed and the conflict between my two attitudes faded, there was one conquering outlook: I was the naive little girl who saw the glimmers in who is most likely a homeless boy from a torn family. Tomorrow I would find him, tell him to seek some clinical help. I might even prod a little, ask about what’s under this masquerade of being from another world. Doubtless I'd help this boy.

I gently strode to the garden, to his favourite patch of pansies, and what I saw, when articulated, will not, perhaps should not, be believed.

A portal is what I can call it, rectangular, radiating, aided so indescribably beautifully by the surrounding flowers in this methodical and artistic way. A marvellous, divine light beamed around, eliciting within me a numinous sensation which my words cannot convey, it was beyond language. I almost feel bad that I can’t describe it.

His cute face I couldn’t see so much as his hair and figure. He removed his white shaggy coat and took an adamant step into the frame of light, the door of electric white! He stepped in and the moment was gone, the surreality vanished, for I had returned to reality. It’s impossible to tell you how long it lasted.

I ran to the place where I’d seen the portal manifest. What was left was his clothes — his big, fluffy white coat and his pair of white trousers. I picked them up and smelt them; they smelt of him, of gin, of earth, of confusion and departure, I missed him so much; I never knew his name — and what he said was true; he wasn’t from this world, or this dimension: he was a spirit, lost in the realms of a foreign world: I don’t know why or how.

Serpentine tears fell from my glitchy eyelids — of course — and the fabric of his shaggy coat absorbed them. So who would believe me if I told them this account? I don’t care. One day he might even be back.