I kept screenshots of the flowers. I figured they would disappear and I wanted to keep them for later, to pull them up so I could look at the uncanny way the petals curved in the images. They were unpredictable and complex and I felt small and unstudied whenever I gazed at them. I wanted to softly slip my fingers across the petals, feel nature challenge my ideas of structure with her wild instincts. The flowers were the only thing that mattered anyways, that and the way the summer sky swelled like an electric daydream. Everything else was burning.
I plan to get flowers for myself, bouquets in my bedroom under the painting that my roommate made. In October I bought a lavender colored journal. It’s kind of big so this will take a few months to finish. Initially I regretted buying it because it reminded me of a lost dream. I made my peace with it though and now I like its softness. In November Alex invited me to a party at her place. I did MDMA and looked at her from a chair. “Softness is so beautiful on a man.”
Softness disappears quickly. Even the flowers, as graceful and gentle as they were, could easily be crushed, burned, and forgotten. Gardens are big in Pakistan, so when my family moved to Canada we kept the tradition. My uncle, my mother, family friends. We spent hours in nurseries studying flowers, trying to figure out the best way to arrange them in our backyards so we could enjoy their blooms in the summer. When I would go back to Pakistan my mom would rummage through my aunt’s garden “look, jasmine, my favorite.” We bought bracelets made with jasmine petals in the Karachi heat and wore them for the evening.
a soft death 