my petals wrinkle underfoot

On flowers, ghosts, and the confrontation with mortality

It’s october, so it’s only right to think about our ghosts. Mine lives in my bedroom, casting a shadow over me when I sit at my desk and wonder what I’m doing it all for.

This week, it lived in a bunch of flowers I bought myself, their petals soft and sturdy.

The flowers have lived in my room for days now, blending into the background with the passing of time that fades their petals. They turn to grey as the october storms roll in.

They were once pink and white, vibrant in the sun that shone through my bedroom window. When I took them out today, they were pale, drained with the exertion of fighting against their timeline.

They had looked fine from where I sat on my bed, their petals intact and their stems green with the life that thrummed inside them.

When I shifted them to dust the bookshelf they were perched on, they crumbled.

Petals floated down to my feet and crumpled under my foot, darkening with the creases that scarred them when they rolled under my shoe.

They lasted longer than I had expected in the pink glass I used to drink water out of, but I was still surprised by their decay. They were perfectly still, perfectly whole, until I touched them and they relinquished.

I often feel akin to those flowers who sit in the glass and wait to rot.

The world passes them by, the sun on occasion spoiling them with its warmth, teasing the petals with a taste of life they can feel dwindling, slipping from their grip.

I have a friend who has never liked flowers. She prefers houseplants, something she can grow with instead of watching die. I think I’m starting to understand that more now.

I felt it heavily when I reached into the bin and lay the petals to rest, taking with them the two weeks they had spent with me in my room.

I look at the flowers and suddenly I’m in a staring contest with my own mortality.

The ghost that lives on my bedroom is perched on my chest when I write this, weighing me down with the burden of life and loss that stings my eyes if I think about it for too long.

I think my ghost wants to be my friend, but I already have the best ones.

It’s a phenomenon I’ve never really experienced before, to be so in love with my life that I grieve it while I live it. It almost makes me miss the times I shook the sand timer, begging for the days to pass. They were easier to lose back then.

Now, I cling to each with a fierce grip, my fingers scrunching into the clouds that start each new day as if I can pull them back, and with them the hands on the clock.

my best friends & I, made using shuffles <3

The feeling sours the sweetest moments and lingers in my periphery, turning the warmest days shades of blue that make me shiver with my impending loss.

It comes with the territory when you’re in the final year of your studies. My dialogue is filled with the exhausted ‘so what’s next?’ and ‘will you stay on to study postgrad?’ and each time I hear those questions, my lungs expell their air and fill with crumpled flower petals, reminding me of my temporality. Reminding me that a little piece of this perfect life dies every time the moon shines.

It’s not about legacy or making history. I don’t mind that I’ll be nothing but an ink blot on the page when my time is done. It’s that I want this moment to continue. To be a continuous line that carries on from page to page. I want the heartbeat that thrums in the walls of our little flat to beat forever. I want it to keep me dry from the rain and warm in the arms of my best friends.

I want the flowers on our kitchen table to live forever.

I know how the sayings go: “the best is yet to come” and “you haven’t even met some of your closest friends yet”. I know how they go, but I don’t care.

It isn’t the future that scares me. It’s that the present will cease to exist and no matter how hard I try, it’ll slip from my grip and die at my feet like the pink petals of my flowers.

Can’t we stay a little longer?

I’ll put on the kettle and make you tea forever if you’ll stay here with me.