Not so Bright

Flowers brighten up any room.

Not so Bright

I bought some flowers just to watch them rot

Reminds me of the vitality I forgot

When I was younger and didn’t have a bad back

A bad neck

Bad knees, bad skin with deeply imprinted lines and puckered marks, quick to dry out and flake away,

Or lungs that would hack and splutter like a sad old lawnmower engine, withered with smoke and ash

Or a stomach churning with the same, soured on cheap whiskey and cheaper food

A fragile plant of a man am I

The flowers take no sins and die so fast, but why?

 

I stopped writing there, perhaps tired of feeling sorry for myself. I’d only just sat down for the evening, hadn’t even poured myself a whiskey. The flowers were tulips from the local market, they’d looked so bright and brilliant from a distance but I swore they’d gotten sadder and iller in my hands. No doubt fragile and forcegrown god forsaken flowers. I’d paid a quid for them, pot and all and placed them neatly on the dining room table, clearing a circle in the centre for them.

Flowers are supposed to cheer you up, right? Brighten even the drabbest and most depressing apartment room? These little s***s only mirrored my own mood. It’s as if they drew from the room and its sadness, not from the soil.

Alright, fine. What else might cheer me up? I headed to the kitchen for a salad, trying to boost my body, and a glass of scotch, to boost my spirits. I settled down with only the tulips to hold my gaze.

Munching apathetically at the salad, I’d be mad to think it, but it felt as though the flowers stood more upright. That with the last leaf of lettuce, the long stem was straight, the petals positively luminous. I raised an eyebrow..and thought it was just my imagination, surely.

I sipped the scotch..a petal fell off. How long had I been cooped up in here, in this tiny studio? Hadn’t I just headed out to buy the flowers this morning? I pulled up on one of the stems near the bulb, and suddenly felt uneasy.

Right, I said to myself, I’m going mad and it’s time for clear air!

Heading out for a run in the brisk, clear winter air, overcoming the hacking of my lungs and thus clearing them, the ancient creaking of my limbs and thus oiling them, I returned a little short of breath.

Breathless but alive, a surge of fresh blood swimming oxygen through my brain.

Into the flat, keys on the table...I must have been seeing things. I could see through the sweat in my eyes, the tulips were practically glowing! So bright, fresh, full of life and oxygen. Or were they always like that. No? Fairly sure they weren’t.

I bought them to brighten the room..so were they or not? Why did I care? Screw it. Still panting and out of breath, I resigned myself to pluck the flowers and throw them out. Impatiently, I grabbed and tugged with a single fist, the other holding myself up in my still exhausted weakness. Faint weakness. Blurred vision, sweat in my eyes? A pounding drumbreat heart, softer, louder, twitching within me. Rasping, hacking ribcage, radiating heat from my very being. 

Am I alright? I moved to sit, my body spasmed and I crashed with a hard smack, my heart beating against itself. With one quickly numbing hand I clutched my chest, seeing the tulips in the other as I sprawled out on the hard wood floor, and seeing for myself..flowers left to rot. I swore from where I lay, was it just my dying eyes, or were they not so bright?