First came the scent—a rich, tonal draft that caressed the sprout, filling her with life and energy, optimism and excitement. It was a scent she would soon learn to associate with birth; newness, love, anticipation. It was a part of her, feeding her and nursing her to a blossom. Creeping up around the blades of grass, she felt the wind around her spine and the gentle dew drops that night brought her whenever the sun rested. She wanted for nothing;
Concentrate on your growth, the soil would whisper, and she did. The rays of sunshine gave her optimism and the hugs of raindrops nourished her, and she sprouted upwards, above the thin grass, the blades cheering her on and pulling her upwards. She turned a gentler shade of green, and her spinal membrane grew stronger and crisper every day. Soon she could feel visitors in the soil, inching around her roots, pausing to comment on what great progress she’d made. And one day, she worked all morning, pushing and pushing until the crown of green that had been her top blossomed into a bright yellow baby sunshine. She smelled the smell of birth, and sprinkled the yellow pollen around while the earth praised her for her achievement. She looked up, and saw blues, whites, browns, purples—and she relayed it all to her roots, telling them about the neighbor’s dog who couldn’t keep out of the trash can and the mother next door who was awake earlier than she was. She loved the bees and their attentions, and sometimes blushed when the grass would tease her about their frequent pollination on her flower. The bees, the earth, the mother, the neighbors’ dog; the world fed and loved her, guarded her as its own, and she couldn’t long for more.
Peeking into the morning sun as she always did, she pulled her leaves apart to reveal her flower. It felt somehow more difficult, fragile, in a way.
Good morning! she croaked, and gasped at her own voice. The wind seemed harsher, the dew colder, and, panicked, she began to tremble.
Look at you, the earth said,
you’re ready for a change. A change? she wondered, and that’s when she noticed. Her lovely yellow petals had transformed into withering white seed pods, exposed and unprotected, embarrassingly bare. She felt naked but couldn’t hide, afraid but too nervous to understand. Why is this happening? she thought, Why me? She drooped, shielding herself from the wind, and tried to close her leaves with no luck. It hurt, and she hated the way her petals were forced to hold onto her stem. She held on through the day and the night, and in the morning, she felt her petals giving out from exhaustion. She had been holding on all night, and she shook both with physical pain and anger at the situation. She wasn’t ready, she had her friends here, the grass, and the mother and the neighbor, and the bees here adored her. She began to cry, and, defeated, she released her cramping muscles and gave way to the wind. Slowly, she was stripped of her crowning petals, drifting away in the wind, and with them, she let go of her pride, and felt a release of—well, of everything. She breathed in and smelled once more the scent, now without her petals, as strong as it was the first time. Her stem eventually fell, and she lost herself in the earth and among the grass.
She awoke in the air—strange, she thought. When she had given up, she didn’t expect to awake again, let alone in this way, apart from the earth she had never been apart from. The air? she thought, and tried to make sense of the breeze and the sunlight. She hardly noticed her tiny body, propelled by an umbrella of silk, lowering her gently down, down. She felt so big up here; greater than everything, and she saw and understood. She saw how big everything was, how insignificant she might seem, and how the roads and the people blended together to create a landscape more beautiful than anything she had ever seen. In that moment, she knew more than the earth, and her spine, and the grass. There was so much to see and comprehend, and she longed to understand. She felt the familiarity of the earth as she landed, and she smiled as the earth welcomed her in a dark, warm hug. She held her breath and waited for the scent of new birth, this time humbler and wiser, opening herself to another cycle of warmth, newness, pain, and wonder.
