(A story about personal evolution and the hope that comes with change)
(Photo by Sakuna Gamage. Do not use without the photographer’s prior permission)
The drumming of mingling voices old and young, was resonant thunder against the petrified coldness of the concrete square. A rough hide of armor sculpted with cracks and crevasses was this forbidding entity. It had lived on, standing strong through the years of weathering.
The gentle roar of voices was never over.
They were inconstant as the moon, tones changing, mouths changing, death and birth an eternal cycle. Footsteps came, footsteps went away from the dead behemoth. Shadows fell on it, darkening its ashen hue with another wash of hard color.
The thunder continued again, clouds insatiable brown mammalian physiques that shifted to and from other places.
Aerial thunder is the herald of more rain-blooms of all breeds start to cheer, smiles of color shooting across dehydrated lands which become verdant with every sip of nature’s airborne blood. So is the vocal thunder the rain that one flower looked forward to.
A small flower.
A little wallflower, seeing all but seen by very few. His was something of a strange time. His roots dug forever into the stony beast, miles beneath what anyone could detect.
More voices thundered gently.
He opened rosy petals, angelic and delicate to welcome-if he could-the fluttering, muttering butterflies-the social butterfly, a species in his own who would dance up to an open blossom and make his petals fall. He was still waiting.
White blended carefully into the lightest baby pink by the gentlest of all artists with the softest of brushes, his petals were light and warm as they stretched out. But the wall kept calling him back. His roots must not be pulled from the wall, from the welcoming heat of the ancient concrete.
Not noticeable, invisible, omniscient, knowing, inquisitive, innocent was he.
Whenever he was home he looked in the glassy pane before reaching back to his old, powerful guardian. Fifty kilograms of five foot five or five foot six-he had forgotten which, for who would care?-intelligent mammal, round of face, a skeleton thinly draped with taught and young skin. The guardian was nowhere as he sighed and stared at the smoothness of the concrete around him, fresh and green.
Here he was beautiful.
Here he was a monarch, here innocent in ignorance.
But what else was he but a little wallflower?
Why, he would think sometime later, was he unlike the others? Something none else were, was the wallflower; they did not embrace the protector’s power. Flowers of all breeds. Roses, jasmines, bluebells and snapdragons. Forget-me-not, lupines, rhododendrons and orchids. The wallflower was the rarest breed.
What a strange little blossom was he!
He wondered in his kingdom of the home, why was he not the beautiful one to the others? More sweat and more breaths, sighs through skeletal chest rattled out of him. He, the wallflower, was still so beautiful, so…beautiful….
Wallflowers have the queerest life.
They go on life with no change, misunderstood and unseen by the other beautiful, soft flowers in the field and unseen by the flirting, rainbow-dashed wings of the butterflies, extravagant lips kissing and touching the hidden hearts of these others. But the wallflower’s nectar is the sweetest, a godlike gift, water from the heavens which needs to be searched from the heart of the blossom. He knew at his heart, his weak gaunt heart was nectar, but what butterflies would take a sip? None he knew but he cried that his heart did not belong.
He wept rivers when their petals fell as the butterflies kissed his field-mate flowers. They were digging away from the wall, angrily releasing roots, gentle cascades of petals falling as a carpet onto the emerald grass, moss and sod.
(Pic by Banuka Athuraliya. Taken from http://www.androdollar.com/. do not use without the photographer’s prior permission)
The rains of change swept past.
Broadened back and chest, fuller face, twelve glorious solid kilos later in his prime. He stood stronger now, more than some but less than others. He paddled the midmost stream in his path. New. But as he looked at the wall, he saw the butterflies flitting closer.
Tears swelled no more within, but a glow of the purest gold showered from his heart, ethereal arms gently and strongly lifting the pools of divine nectar to the rim of his heart.
Where his feet were, petals formed a sweet and smooth rug. Rose-white. His petals.
Only the stubbornest held on, claws still digging angrily into his heart. Their grasp was light.
They would fall.
Wallflowers are a strange breed. They are beautiful in their hearts and minds, and feel the ringing pain in others. Innocence makes the flower’s heart ache and beat when the other heart aches and beats. Paddle evolution’s pristine creek though and they find beauty beyond their hearts could ever know.
Written for Reconciliation 