By Riley Faust, TIWP Student

When I first met her, I didn’t have a favorite flower.

She only mentioned it in passing, just once, as we passed the flower shop on the corner. I watched as her eyes tracked the blossoms, yellows and reds and pinks and purples bursting out from displays, bundled together into tastefully arranged bouquets tied together with a ribbon. Looking past the open door, there were even more, only these were grouped together by type, all in black containers, standing proud. Inside, a woman sat at a desk, cutting the ends of various flowers with an orange-handled pair of garden shears. She must have sensed me looking, because she looked up and smiled at me before waving me towards her with the shears. I just smiled back and kept walking. 

We rounded the corner and, just as we passed the threshold between that shop and the next, she spoke.

“What’s your favorite flower?” She glanced at me with a look in her eyes I couldn’t quite identify. Her hands were clasped in front of her, but she was messing with the thin gold ring she wore on her right hand. I tilted my head up towards the sky as I thought about it. Silence stretched between us, broken constantly by the sounds of the city: cars screeching on pavement, hushed conversation, a shouting salesman, the angry yell of a pedestrian and the responding honk of a truck. Even so, it seemed to encompass the space, and the only sounds that really mattered were the click clack of our heels on the pavement and her quiet breaths, only identifiable by her exhale of frosty air in the cold morning. 

We had just reached the end of the next storefront when I answered. “Well, I don’t really have one. I don’t know. I guess I’ve never thought about it.” I looked back at her, but her eyes were trained on the pavement, focused on avoiding the cracks and bumps and random pieces of trash that were swept into our path like tumbleweeds. She was still messing with that ring. Finally, she looked up, eyes filled with something like determination, and she shook her hair out of her face. With a slight smile, she looked back at me.

“Well, mine are sunflowers. Did you know that some species can grow up to 14 feet tall? And that their faces can be a foot wide? Or that there aren’t just yellow ones, but red and purple too? When they’re young, they actually track the sun with their faces, hence the name.” She kept talking, and I swear I tried to listen, I really did. But her smile was brilliant and her eyes were shining like tiger’s eye in the light. She had stopped twisting her ring around, back and forth, up and down, and instead was waving her hands around a bit. I don’t think she realized it. A couple people who we passed looked at her funny, and then raised their eyebrows at me as if to say, “what’s up with her?” I rolled my eyes and looked back at her. “-and their heads are actually made up of thousands of tiny little flowers, the ones around the edges are just the ones that have bloomed! So when you get a sunflower, you aren’t just getting one flower, but thousands!” At that, she finally looked at me, beaming.

I nodded my head. “That’s really cool.” She looked away and down, and something in her face dimmed. We turned another corner and reached our house, keys jangling as I took them out and unlocked the door. She rushed inside ahead of me, taking off her coat and hanging it in the entryway. Her heels were kicked off and hurriedly pushed against the wall. Before I could say a word, she was rushing upstairs, shouting down that she was taking a shower. She already took one before we left this morning.

Quickly, I grabbed my laptop and began searching, typing, scrolling past pages of color. I looked at shops, their inventory, their overcrowded bouquets. The shower turned off. I kept going, until finally, I found it drifting down from trees, clinging to walls and overtaking abandoned structures like they are the infection and it is the cure. Persistent, unrestrained, and powerful. This was it. She emerged with a towel wrapped around her torso, hair still wet, and I closed the tab, and then the laptop.

The next day, she had work. I didn’t, so I laced up some boots and put on a sun hat and walked back down to that flower shop. It was sunny but warm, a gentle breeze blowing through the buildings that got a bit too ambitious at times and nearly blew my hat away. The door to the shop was open again, and the woman from yesterday was still sitting there, pruning flowers. She looked up at the scuff of my boots against the welcome mat, but didn’t greet me. Instead, she stayed quiet, but I could feel her eyes on me as I looked around the various flowers, looking for six in particular. I turned back to her and told her what I needed, an order for 6 days from now. She looked at me strangely, and opened her mouth as if to suggest something different, but something changed in her eyes and she just nodded before writing down the flowers. I asked her if I could add a note, and she said yes. So I wrote down what I meant to say the day before, paid, and gave her my address. A “thank you for your business” accompanied me as I left the shop. I grabbed coffee on the way home as if it was any other day, and then waited.

Six days later, I kissed her goodbye before I went to work, knowing full well what was coming. A bouquet full of yellow, red, and purple sunflowers, white, purple, and silvery-blue wisteria, and a note written on beige cardstock with a gold border.

If you are the sun, then I am a sunflower, for I cannot help but look for you. And everytime I do, I am so in awe of your light that I know I will look forever. 

Happy Anniversary, Ellie. 

Love, Amber.

P.S. – I’ve decided my favorite flower is wisteria. Did you know that depending on the type, they can grow up to 60 feet long? Their vines are so strong and aggressive that they sneak into almost any crack, to the point where people don’t recommend planting them too close to your house. I’ll tell you more when I get home. 🙂