I’ve received flowers before, mostly in the form of bouquets handed to me after high school theater performances. Sometimes they came after graduations or grand ceremonies. However, I’ve never received flowers with romantic intent.
When I do get flowers, I dry them by hanging them upside down, letting them keep their outer shape in a different form. If the bouquet is too large and overwhelming for me to take care of, I give individual stems away to people who deserve a share of whatever symbolic credit those flowers were meant to give me.
This year, on Valentine’s Day, I stopped by a pop‑up event hosted by Oishii in Boston. They handed me a complimentary tray of Nikko Berries and a single rose. The rose had two blooms: one open, one still a bud.
It was just a flower, the kind I’ve received countless times before, but it was also a flower passed to me on Valentine’s Day, a day that insists on celebrating love of all kinds and forms. To me, the flower felt like a testament of my solicitude.Â
When I got back to my dorm, I put the flower in an unopened Fiji water bottle I had been saving for myself. The sink was right there, but I felt like she deserved better. After carrying her around all day, from one end of Boston to another, I didn’t want to stress her any further. Giving her the water that I would serve myself felt like the least I could do. It’s how I told her that I acknowledge her not merely as a decoration, but as a living thing.Â
The first two days, she not only bloomed, but she blossomed. I had this routine where every morning I would open the blinds to give her sunlight. I would often compliment the flower. Before her, I hadn’t opened my window blinds for myself at all. I would keep it shut all day.Â
I have always dreaded the responsibility of taking care of something. Even the idea of taking care of myself feels like a burdensome task that I’m already behind on. I fear that if something depended on me to survive, I’d eventually lose it. The guilt of that loss would bring me unbearable pain because I may have been able to prevent it. That possibility alone discourages me from even trying to caretake.Â
By the fifth day, the flower petals had already started to wilt and fall off. The leaves were crunchy, and I didn’t understand why. I felt like I had done everything correctly and with genuine intent to love her, but still, I had lost her anyway.Â
I thought she could still be saved. So I cut off the petal-less flower, hoping that the water would flow from the stem with all the sunlight directed at the bud. I assumed the reason the bud still had not blossomed was that her older sister was depleting all her energy. After another week of effort, I realized that wasn’t the case because she still didn’t open. Then, like her older sister, she turned crunchy and never bloomed.Â
This made me remember a line from my favorite book, Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-ExupĂ©ry. The little prince, too, had lost a loved one once; one who was also a flower. He says, “My flower is ephemeral.”
The flower isn’t something I failed to save, but it is something I loved despite its fragility.
To this day, I still have the wilted flower in a bottle. Some part of me still holds onto hope that she won’t miss out on blossoming. At this point, however, I’ve mostly accepted that she’s never going to un-wilt.
I still open the window blinds to let the sunlight in. Maybe not just for the flower anymore, but as a reminder to tend to myself.Â
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