Flowers

An open relationship. A connection to botany.

I am learning about plants. Flowers. Pollinators. All the subtle intricacies of the web of life. 

Flowers.

Depending on the pollinator a flower will vary its shape. Grass has a flower, an unobtrusive quiet thing. It is pollinated by Wind. Wind has no eyes or sense of smell. It is undiscerning, and so grass caters to it only in its shape - sending its flower as high as it can. 

If you cater to flies you draw them with smell. Skunk cabbage mimics rotting meat to draw flies in. They walk around, catch pollen on their feet and fly off, to be lured by another. Lilies will often exclusively use beetles. Shaped to trap the beetle in its flower, the lily will draw it with alluring scents, force it to walk a complicated maze and plop a little clump of pollen on its back as it exits. Others mimic female beetles, and as the male tries to mount, it dusts it with pollen, while grabbing other flower’s pollen with sticky skin. 

If you cater to bees you rely on sight. Bees like big, easy to spot, geometrical shapes. They like petals to land on. They enjoy faint scents, but don’t need much. Moths can only see big white flowers in the dark, but are drawn inevitably by scent - so if its a moth you seek, smell good.

Bees don’t see red well, but birds do. To bring in a hummingbird you want tubelike red flowers with lots and lots of nectar. Same for a bat, but it can’t see or smell. You’d best be large with lots and lots of sweet.

Flowers and pollinators have coevolved - trading preferences back and forth over aeons. A hidden language exists inherent between them. A symbiotic web, that my mind can only just now see. Costs and tradeoffs different for every plant. Cater to the common - build yourself for a bee - and you’re bound to be pollinated, but some of your pollen will be wasted on other flowers not your own kind. Build yourself for a rare creature - a hummingbird or special kind of beetle - your pollen will always be delivered to the right door.

But it is fragile. What if Hummingbirds die off? There is a tropical lily who looks like the female of a now extinct beetle. It made itself so specialized that nothing else will touch it. It reproduces by cloning itself - incapable of adapting to fit new climates, unable to escape from its small trapped world. With efficiency comes lack of redundancy. Without redundancy it only takes one mistake to break a system.

*******

And so, slowly, I find myself entering the game again. I’m in an open relationship now - part my idea, but unknowing of what that means, frightened of what it could mean. Glacially creeping towards water. Toes testing and drawing back. 

It is both familiar, uncanny in its similarities - eyes changing so that every woman has a soul, and I the capacity to unlock it - and different, rules unknown, and promises untested. When I love, I love with body, heart and mind - with a fierce loyalty that takes time and distance to break. I have never not loved a woman I was with.

But what does it mean to have one and look at another? - freely, with permission granted and agreements made? Who wants someone already half taken? How can a heart turned fully one way - be turned fully two?

It is frightening. 

I am faced again with all the doubts that come from looking. Does she see? Who am I to ask? What can I promise? Where do I dare go?

Faced with questions I have always faced, love to face, hate to face. Who do I desire? What flower am I - and what am I shaped to do? Am I open as a dandelion? Am I as alluring and distant as a lily? Am I a grass to send my seed on the wind - or am I a moonflower, send only scent and moths as emissaries. 

I know a few things. I know that like the dandelion, when its rainy and I have no chance of pollination I close my flower. Like it, I can’t keep open all the time, and if some lone bee flies by in the rain I will not open. I know that I like sending out small messages until others come to me. Intention hidden until I am sure - three blatant signs before I speak.

I know also that I do seek. Not always a flower, but sometimes a butterfly. Sometimes moving from place to place, following faint scent trails and subtle petal designs. I prefer to wait, but not always.

Perhaps I am dainty Alyssum, caterer to bees should they not be inquisitive elsewhere, but seducer of butterflies. I seek with scent, drawing wings down from the sky with infinite patience. Now I have all the time.

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All the time. There is joy in this fearful thing. When single there is a craving, a need to be with someone, to share a soul, to touch skin on skin, and even as I pick and choose there is some settling simply for the sake of not being alone. 

Not now. 

There is joy in the capacity to promise again. “What does this mean?” My parents would ask “Being in an open relationship?” 

“Very little in any practical sense - not now anyway. But the one thing to change is the freedom to be flirtatious.” Flirtation is the art of coming as close to promising without actually. With someone you know well that line is clear. With a stranger you stray further to the safe - not wanting to entangle another in a game you do not know if they play. Unwilling even to seem to promise something you cannot deliver, because sometimes promises turn real.

Now I feel I can skirt that line again, and it is a joy as if some part of me had been returned. For so many years I’ve built my mask around flirtation, only recently set aside. To have it back - it is a joy.

Joy, fear - it is all part of the game. I am learning about plants. Flowers. Pollinators. All the subtle intricacies of the web of life and love.