I grew up in a place where people only ever talked about flowers to remind everyone how fast things die. They’d tell me a blossom is just a fragile thing—it opens up to the morning sun, and by nightfall, it’s nothing but rot and dust. I was raised on that thought. It gets inside the head. But time moves on, the world changes, and a new way of thinking starts to take root.
Photo by Jean-Daniel Francoeur from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/photo-of-man-holding-flower-while-standing-in-the-middle-of-an-empty-road-3150101/
We can write our own definitions. We can look at that quick, fleeting life and call it beautiful. It fades fast, sure, but so do the seasons, and so do the rarest moments we get on this dirt.
I want us to see the better side of it. I want us to see how perfectly it mirrors our own lives, even if it leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. It’s hard to swallow—the fact that we will all have our season to bloom so loudly, only to drop our petals and disappear like we were never even here.
Today, on my way into the town center, I just stopped dead in my tracks.
There was this flower on the side of the path, and I couldn't take my eyes off it. I stood there trying to fit my whole life into its tiny lifespan. It was huge, bursting with all these different colors that somehow blended perfectly together, making it impossible to ignore from a distance.
I just stared at it, wondering how this tiny, quiet thing was holding the entire messy roadmap of my life.
It blooms in the morning, looking flawless to anyone passing by. Looking closer, I could feel how easily it could break. I looked at the tiny, fragile stalk holding the whole thing up, forcing it to be seen. The stem was so weak, but what it carried was so beautiful it made me want to reach out and hold it, just to keep it safe.
The morning is easy. But the evening comes fast, and it doesn't care.
By nightfall, the flower shrinks and shrivels so quickly it feels like a slap in the face—like all that beauty wasn't enough to make the day stay a little longer. It loses its color. It bows down to the dirt.
But it doesn't leave empty-handed. It leaves the fruit. It leaves the seeds. The very things we end up eating, the things that sink into the soil to make sure more flowers keep coming up after we're gone.
It terrified me to realize that this is my story, and it’s our story too. We will bloom when the sun comes up, and we will wither when it goes down. It might not even be a physical sickness or death right away, but the good things will end. The jobs we love will finish. The things we enjoyed the most will slip through our fingers.
I will cry. I will shrink. My health will give out, and people will stop looking at me because the vibrant things that made them look in the first place will be gone, buried in days that are never coming back.
We are all forced to live through our own breaking down. Not because we want to, and not because we like it, but because we still have to sow those seeds we made back when we were bright. It’s the only chance we get to shine again.
So, I’m going to keep watching the flower, and I’m going to wait for the seeds. That’s the only way to survive.
I am a flower, and I’m pretty sure we all are. We get to shine on our good days. And then, when the clock runs out, we will melt away like morning dew, leaving an empty space like we never existed. The only thing we can count on is what we built while we were still standing in the light.
The seeds are everything. I’m going to keep thinking about this flower—the good, the bad, the short life, and everything in between. It’s just how it is for us on this earth.
I’ll walk away knowing that, just like that bloom, I’ll have my golden days and then they’ll go. When everything starts to wither, the only safety net I’ll have is what I planted when the sun was still hot.
I finally walked into the town center, but my head was full of this map. I don't know where it’s taking me, but I know it's the same road we are all walking down too.
Thanks for reading, Hive community.