chrysanthemum

“Look down, Papa, Mum’s grass grew!”

Here in the city, flowers never grew too well.

In his memory, they flower red and blue and yellow, five-petaled primrose, white blossoms shot through with hints of fuchsia.

“Look, Papa, it’s so bright.”

“Yes, Deirdre.” His gaze never strays from the window.

In a forgotten spring, daffodils would pop through fields of snow--no roads, nor concrete, nor barren ground.

They arrive on visions of a willowy woman, cocoa-brown eyes tapped with crows-feet, blue skies blending in wispy-brown hair. She was sent to Heaven with a bouquet of ruffled-orange flowers, wafting in her wake a trail of fresh-baked cookies. Chocolate-chip, a hint of rose.

And love, too.

She was his wife.

“Mum loved that yellow grass, remember?”

“Yes…” But the world had gone grey.

Long before her passage, from that day they first met, Anne would drop faux-rose perfume on the outside of her wrists. A whisper of color, of miracles long forgotten.

Roses would wash over him, engulfing him, as they held a tight embrace, her lips rising, parting to sing, heels tapping as she twirled, two slender fingers brushing from his cheeks a crystal bitter tear.

And in her palms, a single seed.

Her voice was once a siren's, her smiling eyes a cure from the monotonous grey world that now consumed them.

We can restore the world.

“Papa, it grew!” A little hand tugged at his.

“Shh…”

They’d lived a game of survival. The joy had blinked out-- a long, long time ago, but a tiny ember, that tiny ember…

Gone. Swallowed by the thousand piping factories, the acrid smoke, the cracked dusty dirt that had replaced the simple joy of daffodils.

Ten dozen a floor, a forgotten sun, skyscrapers as far as the eye can see. It isn’t very far.

“Look, Papa! Look, Mum’s grass is yellow!”

He tears himself from the window and looks down.

In Deirdre’s palms is a plastic grey pot, filled to the brim with dusty grey dirt. And from within rises a single green stalk, topped off by a ruffled orange crown.