The Language of Flowers

Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

Common thistle is everywhere,” she said. “Which is perhaps why human beings are so relentlessly unkind to one another.

In that moment, we were the same, each of us destroyed by our limited understanding of reality.

Hate can be passionate or disengaged; it can come from dislike but also from fear.

It wasn't as if the flowers themselves held within them the ability to bring an abstract definition into physical reality. Instead, it seemed that...expecting change, and the very belief in the possibility instigated a transformation.

This time, there was no escape, I could not turn away, could not leave without accepting what I had done. There was only one way to the other side, and that was through the pain.

Over time, we would learn each other and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.

I believe you can prove everyone wrong, too, Victoria. Your behavior is a choice; it isn't who you are.

Your behavior is a choice; it isn’t who you are.

Here you are, obsessed with romantic language-a language invented for expression between lovers-and you use it to spread animosity.

I felt my true, unworthy self to be far away from his clutching grasp, hidden from his admiring gaze.

Her eyes were open, taking in my tired face... Her face twitched into what looked like a squinty smile, and in her wordless expression I saw gratitude, and relief, and trust. I wanted, desperately, not to disappoint her.

She was perfect. I knew this the moment she emerged from my body, white and wet and wailing. Beyond the requisite ten fingers and ten toes, the beating heart, the lungs inhaling and exhaling oxygen, my daughter knew how to scream. She knew how to make herself heard. She knew how to reach out and latch on. She knew what she needed to do to survive. I didn’t know how it was possible that such perfection could have developed within a body as flawed as my own, but when I looked into her face, I saw that it clearly was.

For eight years I dreamed of fire. Trees ignited as I passed them; oceans burned.

You should see the way she smiles when I rattle off the names of the orchids in the greenhouse: oncidium, dendrobium, bulbophyllum, and epidendrum, tickling her face with each blossom. I wouldn't be surprised if 'Orchidaceae' was her first word.

I would keep her, and raise her, and love her, even if she had to teach me how to do it.

Now, as an adult, my hopes for the future were simple: I wanted to be alone, and to be surrounded by flowers. It seemed, finally, that I might get exactly what I wanted.

Do you really think you’re the only human being alive who is unforgivably flawed? Who’s been hurt almost to the point of breaking?

The language of flowers is nonnegotiable, Victoria,” Elizabeth said,

We replanted. The loss was substantial, but it was overshadowed completely by losing you.

If it was true that moss did not have roots, and maternal love could grow spontaneously as if from nothing, perhaps I had been wrong to believe myself unfit to raise my daughter. Perhaps the unattached, the unwanted, the unloved, could grow to give love as lushly as anyone else.

I had been loyal to nothing except the language of flowers. If I started lying about it, there would be nothing in my life that was beautiful or true.

For eight years I dreamed of fire. Trees ignited as I passed them; oceans burned. The sugary smoke settled in my hair as I slept, the scent like a cloud left on my pillow as I rose. Even so, the moment my mattress started to burn, I bolted awake. The sharp, chemical smell was nothing like the hazy syrup of my dreams; the two were as different as Carolina and Indian jasmine, separation and attachment. They could not be confused. Standing in the middle of the room, I located the source of the fire. A neat row of wooden matches lined the foot of the bed. They ignited, one after the next, a glowing picket fence across the piped edging. Watching them light, I felt a terror unequal to the size of the flickering flames, and for a paralyzing moment I was ten years old again, desperate and hopeful in a way I had never been before and never would be again. But the bare synthetic mattress did not ignite like the thistle had in late October. It smoldered, and then the fire went out. It was my eighteenth birthday.

The open forgiveness in her eyes, the uncensored love, terrified me.

Over time, we would learn each other, and I would learn to love her like a mother loves a daughter, imperfectly and without roots.

Prese un giglio tigre arancione da un secchio. «Per te» mi disse porgendomelo. «No non mi piacciono i gigli» risposi. E non sono una regina pensai. «Dovrebbero piacerti» replicò. «Ti si addicono.»

I’m talking about the language of flowers. It’s from the Victorian era, like your name. If a man gave a young lady a bouquet of flowers, she would race home and try to decode it like a secret message. Red roses mean love; yellow roses infidelity. So a man would have to choose his flowers carefully.