Witty Banter
Something that’s always lingered quietly in the back of my mind is the thought of flowers. I’ve been given flowers, and I’ve given them too to people I’ve loved, in moments that mattered. But there’s always been something about them that puzzles me. Flowers appear in so many shapes, at so many events. We hand them over at beginnings, leave them behind at endings. We use them to say what we don’t know how to put into words. And it makes me wonder, what if flowers aren't just symbols of our emotions, but silent witnesses to them? What if they’re not just decorative, but deliberate? What if they’ve seen so much that they carry a kind of wisdom we’ve overlooked? Maybe, just maybe, flowers are trying to tell us something about the full spectrum of life, about beauty and decay, softness and strength, blooming and letting go.
So, lets get to business.
Silent Witness
This one's been blooming in the corners of my mind for a while now, softly, slowly. It doesn’t arrive with urgency, but with familiarity, the way jasmine lingers in the air long after night has fallen. It shows up in the quiet moments, in half-forgotten memories, in the background of conversations where someone calls themselves a mess, or jokes about falling apart. It flickers to life in a room where a bouquet sits untouched on the table, given in joy, or sorrow, or some complicated mix of both. And I started to wonder: what do the flowers know that we don’t? Because they’ve been there for all of it, the rituals, the reckonings, the beginnings and endings we barely have language for. The birth and the break. The wedding and the wake. The confession whispered between two people who don’t know how to go back to before. The quiet presence beside a hospital bed, where words are either too much or not enough. The thing about flowers is they never ask questions, never demand answers. They just show up, stand still, and witness. And sometimes, that’s all we really need.
Flowers know where to Stand
Not all flowers bloom in sunlight. Some arrive in shadows. Some sit quietly beside grief, asking no questions, offering no answers. And maybe that’s the thing, flowers seem to know exactly where to be. A rose on a first date, handed over with a kind of nervous hope, saying more in silence than small talk ever could. Tulips in hospital rooms, bright but not overwhelming, like a promise you’re trying to believe in. Peonies at dinner parties, lush and generous, like laughter that spills over wine glasses. Sunflowers at funerals, not because they are cheerful, but because they turn toward the light, and we all need something that still knows how. Daisies tucked behind ears on long walks home. Jasmine on warm nights when no one says “I love you,” but everyone knows. Lilies left in doorways where apologies are too late. Flowers show up in the middle of stories we don’t know how to tell. They find their place in the emotional architecture of our lives, not loud, not showy, just right. They don’t demand attention. But when they’re missing, you feel the absence like a silence that should have been filled. Flowers don’t interrupt the moment; they become part of it. And somehow, without asking, they stay.
Petals know how to Remember
Time doesn’t pass the same way for flowers. We think of them as short-lived, but some remain long after the room empties. They get pressed into books we forget about. They stay in vases long after the water has gone cloudy. They dry on windowsills and collect dust like old stories waiting to be remembered. Not all things that fade are forgotten. Not all things that dry out are dead. There’s a particular kind of memory that clings to petals. The marigolds from a wedding now stored in a box somewhere, still holding the scent of celebration. The single lavender stem you picked on a road trip and tucked into your dashboard like a secret. The wildflowers someone gathered for you on a day that didn’t feel important, until you realized it was. These aren’t decorations. They’re evidence. That it happened. That you were there. That someone cared enough to stop, to notice, to say something wordless. Flowers don’t preserve moments by freezing them. They let them soften. Fade gently. Become something you can carry without pain. And maybe that’s the gift—flowers don’t just bloom in the present. They bloom in memory, too.
Maybe You're Not Supposed to Make Sense
We spend so much of our lives trying to make sense. To be logical, digestible, clear. We trim the edges of ourselves, straighten the curves of our emotions, rehearse our stories until they sound tidy. We try to be versions of ourselves that are easy to understand. Easy to love. But flowers don’t try to make sense, they just are. A sunflower doesn’t apologise for facing the sun. A wildflower doesn’t worry about blooming in the wrong place. A rose doesn’t question whether its thorns make it unworthy of admiration. Flowers live their shape. They bend and bloom and break and bloom again, and they never feel the need to justify it. What if we lived that way? What if we allowed ourselves to bloom without editing? To spiral without shame? To unfold in contradiction and call it character instead of chaos? What if we stopped trying to be perfect, and started trying to be true? There’s something sacred in living your shape, your actual shape, not the one you’ve been taught to fit into. You are not meant to be simple. You are meant to be meaningful.
The Dried Rose
Someone once left a dried rose inside a book I borrowed. No note. No name. Just a small, pressed thing tucked between pages that smelled like ink and time. I don’t know who left it there, or why. Maybe it marked something beautiful. Maybe it marked something lost. Maybe it was just a moment someone didn’t want to forget, flattened into silence and hidden between sentences. But when I found it, I stopped. Because that’s the thing about flowers, they carry meaning even when they’re no longer alive. Especially then. Even dried and faded, they hold echoes of touch, of voice, of emotion. That rose didn’t need a note to speak. It already did. And maybe that’s true of us, too. Maybe the parts of ourselves we think have withered still matter to someone. Still mean something. Maybe the moments we thought were forgotten still live on in someone’s memory, folded between the chapters of their life. That’s what flowers do, they remind us that even what fades can still be felt.
Beginning of End of the New Beginning
So maybe we should stop trying to be pristine. Maybe we should stop trying to be composed, controlled, curated. Maybe we should stop shrinking ourselves into perfect lines and start blooming in our own rhythm. Let your petals be uneven. Let your leaves curl. Let yourself reach awkwardly toward what you love, even if you get it wrong. Let the sun catch you on a day you didn’t plan to feel beautiful. Let your life look like something lived in. Stop apologizing for how loud your joy is. Or how long your sadness lasts. Or how much space your emotions take up in a room. You are not a problem to be solved. You are a flower learning how to bloom again. Over and over. No matter the season. Because the truth is, the flowers? They’ve seen it all. They’ve stood beside us when we couldn’t find the words. They’ve watched us laugh in love and cry in grief and sit in silence between the two. They’ve seen us at our beginnings and our endings. And not once did they flinch. Not once did they say we were too much. And still, they reach for the light.
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